


come just a little bit closer ‘til we collide

by pansexual_intellectual



Series: A Lover’s Fatal Identity (Is Precisely This) [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark Magic, Draco Malfoy Needs a Hug, Draco Malfoy has a snake, Draco Malfoy in Malfoy Manor, Draco Malfoy reads Muggle poetry but will deny it to the last breath, Draco Really Wants to Be A Parselmouth, Harry needs a fucking hug, Her name is saorise, I mean ish, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Is cool, Let's All Go Murder Vernon Dursley, Lol I didn’t spell his name right, Luna Lovegood Is Awesome, M/M, No beta we die like rush limbagh HAAAA, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Oscar Wilde is a particular favorite of his, POV Draco Malfoy, POV Harry Potter, POV Severus Snape, Parselmouth Harry Potter, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Aftermath, Suicidal Thoughts, The Dursleys Suck, he has like a few paragraphs tbh he's not that important, my hope is that you will cry when you read it but it's up to you, sry not sry can’t be arsed to do it righhht, we have mixed opinions on Snape, well-written i hope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24687472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pansexual_intellectual/pseuds/pansexual_intellectual
Summary: Potter defends people, he throws himself into things with moronic Gryffindor bravery, and Draco doesn’t have the heart (whatdoeshe have the heart for, he wonders) to tell him that he could save so many more people if he applied a dab of Slytherin cunning to his schemes and machinations.But everyone has always hated Slytherins, the whole school hates him and Pansy and Millie and Blaise and Crabbe and Goyle and the rest of them, green-clothed smirking daggers that they are.Draco doesn’t bother to explain that Slytherin takes in the battered ones, the one that life has crushed, and sharpens them all into something wicked and strong.  He doesn’t bother to explain that they are cruel but they are kind, that the volley of clever wordplay isfun, sometimes.  Yes, they are sharp and cruel, but they do nothing the world hasn’t done to them already, and people are so fuckinghypocritical.He doesn’t have the heart to.Or:Two broken boys with walls as thick as forests.  Half-Blood Prince AU
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: A Lover’s Fatal Identity (Is Precisely This) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801801
Comments: 138
Kudos: 278
Collections: literally amazing i could read these over and over





	1. if i painted you in bruises

* * *

When the Dark Lord comes, all white-snow skin and red, red, eyes, cold long fingers and thin, translucent, skin, Draco doesn’t notice. He’s in his bed, shivering and curling in on himself, fingers pressing against the bruise at his hipbone, heavy-purple and mottled, the bruise his father had left with the head of his cane scarcely an hour ago, _what kind of son are you_ and heavy silver and his mother, white-faced, hands flying, _Lucius no Lucius no Lucius no_. 

His snake, Saorise, is weaving between his fingers, hissing concernedly and Draco wishes, for the hundredth time, that he spoke Parseltongue, that he was a Parselmouth- fucking Potter doesn’t _deserve_ it, doesn’t even _own a snake_ for Merlin’s sake. He’d had his little inferiority complex about not being as Light and Gryffindor-ish and Dumbledore-Approved as everyone had thought he was, and then he got over it and never spoke Parseltongue unless he needed to. 

It’s so fucking _unfair_ , all of it, Draco thinks; anything for a distraction. 

Not a Crucio, but the bruise is spreading somehow. What had been barely a few inches in diameter is steadily widening, covering more than half his ribcage. Cursed silver, most likely, but his father’s never hit him with that side of the cane before. Draco wonders what he did wrong, wonders if he deserved it, wonders if anyone does. 

For the first time in ages, Draco thinks of Dobby, thinks of his defiance and lamp-eyes and peckish disgust; _Master Malfoy is being a bad master, sir!_ He’d been an awful house elf, always questioning and stamping, eyes so large but slitting so thinly when he disapproved, and Lucius had attempted to beat it out of him and it hadn’t worked and here they were now. 

Dobby worships Potter now, Draco hears. He doesn’t blame Dobby, thinking of those long seconds he’d had to hold his fingers on the stovetop, thinks of the lamps he’d had to smash his face in, the countless punishments deserved and undeserved. 

It would have been _so much_ easier for Dobby if he’d just _listened_ , and Draco had tried to tell him that once, but he doesn’t think Dobby understood. 

Draco thinks of Granger and Weasley and Dobby all those other _sycophants_ that worship him. He doesn’t understand why- or, no. He does. 

Potter isn’t especially talented, although his DADA work’s always been superb. He doesn’t have the exceptionally fine control or the intuitive grasp of potions the way Draco does, or the fiendish book-smarts that Granger does. He has raw, messy, power, but he lacks _finesse_. 

What draws people to him is the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, the brightness of his green eyes behind those hideous glasses (an _Avada Kedavra_ muffled behind glass; Draco understands it now, understands those eyes that have taken in death and throw it back out), the way he tries to be nice (to everyone but Slytherins). He’s the fucking stereotype of an affable hero, and people _eat it up_. 

He defends people, he throws himself into things with moronic Gryffindor bravery, and Draco doesn’t have the heart (what _does_ he have the heart for, he wonders) to tell him that he could save so many more people if he applied a dab of Slytherin cunning to his schemes and machinations. 

But everyone has always hated Slytherins, the whole school hates him and Pansy and Millie and Blaise and Crabbe and Goyle and the rest of them, green-clothed smirking daggers that they are. 

Draco doesn’t bother to explain that Slytherin takes in the battered ones, the one that life has crushed, and sharpens them all into something wicked and strong. He doesn’t bother to explain that they are cruel but they are kind, that the volley of clever wordplay is _fun_ , sometimes. Yes, they are sharp and cruel, but they do nothing the world hasn’t done to them already, and people are so fucking _hypocritical_. 

He doesn’t have the heart to. 

Draco thinks about how he’d once extended a hand to Potter, the Heir of an Ancient and Noble House, a tentative alliance in the curve of his fingers, the chink of his elbow. Malfoys and Potters weren’t allies in the past war, but their history extended farther than that, roots trawling deep beneath soil and tangling together more often than not. 

He can recite every Malfoy-Potter marriage in the last three hundred years, and if James Potter had lived, Potter would have been able to as well, Draco knows. 

For as much as the Light preaches, one has to only look at their family trees, and well. The evidence speaks for itself, purebloods are purebloods, no matter how you want to look at it, casting shadows and labeling things ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’. 

It really isn’t about blood purity, and for a second Draco hates Voldemort for making it about that. (Only a second and then he tamps it down, twisting it painfully and shoving it in a tiny velvet box, tosses it in the narrow creaking closet where he keeps the rest of the Things Lucius Malfoy Would Not Approve Of, where he keeps the memorized lines of the muggle poet Oscar Wilde he’d read in France, _save where some ebbing desultory wave/frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand_ , where he keeps the stolen moments with Blaise, hands brushing under tables and later, lips.) 

No, it’s about the power, the culture. You might want the bright muggle-born witch, but your family _needs_ an alliance with the Lestranges. 

Family magick, too, plays a role. The Blacks have a history of Metamorphmagi, tempered by a healthy dose of madness, the Lestranges have fine cheekbones and Seers, the Bulstrodes have natural Legilimens. 

More than that, the ancestral lands steeped in centuries of sacrifice, the ballrooms and bright glassine dances paid for in blood. Muggle-borns don’t understand, not really, they can’t, they weren’t raised that way. 

No, it isn’t the blood purity, really. Purebloods aren’t fucking stupid, they understand the dangers of inbreeding. Magic is magic and magic is might; fresh blood is always appreciated. In the 1800’s, purebloods would take in muggle-borns (it’s the magic that matters, after all) and raise them pure, steeping them in a complex brew of grace and waltzing and decades, _centuries_ , of blood charts, memorized marriages and alliances and dates, of the Old Magic that fucking Dumbledore and Fudge have done their best to stamp out. 

_Blood magic is dangerous_ , they insist, and so they have to conduct their holy rites under the cover of the night, have to celebrate Beltane with a wary eye on the shadows. 

Granger is among the worst of them; she’s a fucking _tourist_. Muggles have walked on the moon, and yet somehow she doesn’t understand the fundamentals of traveling to another culture- you _respect_ , you question _later_ , if at all. She raises her hand and squirms in her seat, pantingly desperate to show how capable she is, but she knows _nothing_. 

It’s a shame, really- she’s clever and talented, she has control and precision, but she keeps herself so firmly in place, she knows nothing about rituals and blood and power. _Dark Magic is banned_ , they say, never mind that they’re completely cutting off an _entire branch_ of magic. 

France is looser about these things; he loves it there, the pretty girls with long lashes and soft hands, the pretty boys with knowing eyes and pink mouths. 

_I went to France over the summer_ , he says, eyes bright, and Pansy understands, winking one thickly-lashed eye and mouthing _say no more_ ; Blaise understands, eyes glinting with something that makes Draco go loose and hot, his stomach pitting with something desperate. It’s all he will get; stolen kisses and fucking in a bed spelled with enough silence and privacy wards to guard the fucking Department of Mysteries. 

He isn’t bitter about it (although maybe he is, he can’t deny he wants to be able to love freely), he knows he must continue the Malfoy line, knows it is his duty to the hundreds of ancestors that have bled for him, the countless great-greats who have stifled their desires and gritted their teeth to continue the line, without which he would not have existed. 

His mother loves his father, though- loved him, maybe, he doesn’t know about now. She loves him, too, loves him fiercely and unabashedly and maybe to a Gryffindor it wouldn’t be apparent, but she is a Slytherin and Slytherins craft plans that _work_ , they weave webs of deceit and cunning and tighten them noose-like until secrets are gasped out and confessions are stolen and freedom is purloined. 

Narcissa may love him, but she is realistic and she will not steal him away, will not so much whisper any thread of anything she is planning to him until the time comes. 

Draco wonders if Lucius loved him- he doesn’t now, Draco thinks. Knows. 

The bruise has spread across his ribs now; it unfurls inky-violet clouds across the white skin of his thighs, stretches twilight fingers across his collarbone. 

Draco wonders if the bruise will spread across his neck, his face, his feet, until his skin is purple-black all over, until he is a pool of aching. He wonders if he will welcome it. 

_There must be a counter curse,_ Draco thinks, distantly. A simple _finite_ does not work on these sticky, devious, curses that smile around a mouthful of glass-sharp teeth and sink into skin. Dark Magic, yes, but- 

But what? Fudge and fucking Dumbledore would point to his skin and say _see? This is what Dark Magic does_ but they don’t understand, don’t understand that it is _their_ restrictions and rules and banned magics that have forced his family into these contortions, don’t understand that only a Dark Magic countercurse will work on this, that Light Magic _will not fix it_. 

Light Magic doesn’t fix a thing. 

Saorise hisses again, nuzzling worriedly against his skin. He forgets her breed, it is something intelligent and venomous and loyal as Muggle snakes are not; magic doesn’t fix everything but it fixes a lot. 

Saorise means _freedom_ , and Draco named her half-laughing half-crying, because she was the one thing he could never truly have and yet he _owned her_ , didn’t they see, wasn’t it funny? 

Draco can’t remember the last time he laughed, really laughed. 

Must have been with Pansy. 

Another hiss, Saorise weaving in between his legs and settling on his hair. He considers telling her to get off, but that would just mess up his hair more, and besides, it’s not as if she would understand him, because _doesn’t fucking speak Parseltongue_. 

He really, really, wants to be a Parselmouth, and it is that that sends him bolt upright, a shaking hand doing up his shirt buttons, slowly. 

If the bruise expands anymore, he won’t be able to hide it, so Draco casts a quick stasis charm, teeth gritted and voice sharp, intended to halt the progress of the ink-violet. 

It doesn’t work at first, it needs more of a kick, so Draco casts a Dark Magic stasis charm, one intended for preserving bodies, and the bruise slows and settles finally, peevishly. 

Draco exhales shakily, sliding Saorise around his neck and straightening his robes, smoothing his hair. 

He intends to go to the family library, intends to research Parseltongue and maybe, if he has time, a countercurse, but he hears voices and pauses. 

His father’s voice, shaking slightly; _my Lord_ , and Draco freezes. 

_My Lord._

There is only one man his father will bow to, there is only one man that his father will address as his _Lord_. 

(Draco feels a shiver of disgust, distaste; that his father, Lord of an Ancient and Noble House, will _ingratiate_ himself to a _monster_ \- he shoves it quickly in the closet, shoves the door shut. It is beginning to bulge at the hinges, but Draco doesn’t care, casts a few clever reinforcing charms and banishes the thought of it from his mind.) 

How could Lucius _not tell him_ that the _Dark Lord Voldemort_ was coming to their Manor? 

_I hate him_ , Draco thinks gently, softly; he doesn’t have the energy for anything more at the moment. 

Draco mutters a curse in Latin that would make his mother’s ears bleed and casts a few quick wordless charms, straightening everything and dampening the high flush in his cheeks and the feverish light in his eyes, muffling the aching pain of the rib-wide bruise so he can walk without wincing. 

He descends the staircase with grace; he is a Malfoy after all. Narcissa’s eyes turn to him, wide and horrified for a brief fraction of an instant before smoothing out to blankness. He bows and takes his place next to his mother. 

The Dark Lord eyes him, amused. Draco is disgusted at his serpentine features, at this mockery of a man who has torn his entire being, scratched and scraped at his humanity until it ran dry, carved himself into a monster with corpse-colored skin and blood-colored eyes and gaunt, stick-thin, limbs, but he’s been Occluding since he could speak French and he knows that not a trace of it shows on his face. 

Hardly anything ever does, besides faint disdain; Draco’s been disregarding his emotions long enough that they fade into muffled, unheeded, cries. 

“Draco Malfoy,” It muses, red red eyes glowing, “Draco Malfoy.” 

The Dark Lord glides further into Draco’s space and Draco forces himself not to tense. “You _reek_ of curses.” The Dark Lord says softly. 

“My Lord?” Draco says just as softly in return, voice questioning and respectful and son-like. 

“You have trained this one well, Lucius,” The Dark Lord observes, eyeing him. He inclines his head to Draco’s mother. “Narcissa.” 

“Thank you, my Lord.” Narcissa says smoothly, and Lucius echoes the statement, albeit more stiffly. 

The Dark Lord returns to his original vein of thought, cocking his skull- Draco doesn’t know if he can rightly call it a head - and slowly reaching out. 

A monster reaches out with one languid, white, hand, spidery and thin and unspeakably austere, and Draco does not move a muscle. 

The monster lifts Draco’s hair from his neck, exposing the slowly spreading violet bruising; the stasis charm must have worn off in the presence of so much magic. 

“What is the countercurse?” The Dark Lord muses; he is enjoying this, playing with his food. 

“Ah, yes,” The Dark Lord says, " _Vulnus sanandum_ , is it not?” A languid hand sketches out the wand movement (Draco commits it to memory; a spiraling star). 

Draco does not believe for a second that it is a kindness; the Dark Lord is telling Lucius not to heal him, he will enjoy watching Draco forced to learn it before the bruise overtakes his entire body. 

Draco inclines his head a fraction, eyes flitting to his feet in ostentatious respect. 

Voldemort smiles. 

* * *

There is a dreadfully, painfully, uncomfortable dinner, the Dark Lord lounging at the head of the table with Bella at his right hand, Nagini sprawling in thick bulging loops to his left.

Saorise is small enough (Draco has a Shrinking Charm on her; otherwise she’d have been confiscated) that she goes unnoticed, although the way Nagini’s eyes linger on him, he doubts it will be for long. 

Draco does not envy the Dark Lord a lot of things, but for Parseltongue. 

Afterwards, the house elves clear the dishes with snaps of their fingers and Draco is dismissed. Heart beating fast, he slips into the library and loses himself in old grimoires, searching for that countercurse. 

After several hours, he finds it- _vulnus sanandum_ with half a page dedicated to it. He scoops up that book, as well as several more on Parseltongue and two volumes on rare Dark Magic, and heads to his room. 

Draco casts several high-powered locking charms on his door, as is his habit, and gets to work. 

* * *

It takes him the better part of an hour to successfully cast _vulnus sanandum_ , but finally the bruise recedes, leaving the way it came, slowly withdrawing.

That taken care of (there’s no way to ward against the cursed silver; he checked), Draco turns to Parseltongue. 

It’s an inherited ability, that much has always been clear, but Draco finds something far more interesting. 

There’s expressed Parseltongue traits, and latent Parseltongue traits, which shows up in those whose genetic connection to Salazar Slytherin is weak but present. 

Draco closes his eyes and mentally references the blood map he’s memorized a thousand times over, a spiderweb of Lestranges and Bulstrodes and Blacks and Notts and Potters and- 

And Gaunts. Heart beating fast, Draco reads on. (Gaunts have married into the Malfoys several times over; once in 1323, once in 1632, and once in 1698. There’s one more, in somewhere in the 900’s, but Draco can’t remember it.) 

Apparently, Parseltongue is not like every language, it cannot be learned by everyone. Those with expressed Parseltongue traits speak it automatically ( _Potter_ , Draco thinks resentfully, biting his tongue so hard he tastes blood), but those with latent Parseltongue traits can _learn._

Draco is shaking, almost frantic in his excitement, _please please please_ beating fast in his throat. He might be able to learn; languages have always been easy for him, he speaks _five_ fluently, and _seven_ others passably. 

He _has_ Gaunt blood in him, and by extension, Slytherin blood. It is weak to say the least, but surely- 

There’s a test to check for latent Parseltongue traits, an obscure one. Draco realizes that this is all based off the writings of an ancient, _ancient_ grimoire written in virtually undecipherable Middle English, but he does not care, it has to work, it _has_ to. 

It requires a blood ritual, and Draco knows he cannot do it tonight; it’s a new moon. In a week, when the moon is waxing, he decides. 

“Soon, I might be able to understand you,” Draco whispers to Saorise, smiling as she winds around his forearm, tongue flickering. 

* * *

He can’t tell if his dreams are nightmares or not; they all revolve around snakes and flickering tongues and pain; red eyes warring against the greenest eyes he’s ever seen.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two other WIP's going at the moment, but this was begging to be written, so here we are. I'm not going to abandon this fic, promise, but updates will be slow (twice a month or so.)
> 
> Teasers for the next chapter:
> 
> 1\. I promise Draco will be able to speak Parseltongue soon.
> 
> 2\. Draco's love for Muggle poetry will be expanded upon. Oscar Wilde is a shoe-in obviously, but we'll be getting some Christina Rossetti and a dash of Poe, too.
> 
> 3\. We will soon enter Harry's POV. (Right now he's seeming like a bit of a moronic jock-stereotype and I promise it isn't that- remember, Harry was abused, too, even if his abuse was different from Draco's. He was starved, beaten, assaulted; Draco was beaten and tortured à la _Crucio_. I'm not sure which is worse; they're both pretty damn awful.)
> 
> (also also, i have discovered a lovely theme song for this fic: Bad People by Lauren Aquilina. listen to it, you won't regret it.)


	2. in which the curtain falls away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Draco studies up on Parseltongue, muses on murdering Dumbledore, and gets _Crucioed_.
> 
> In which Harry is revealed to us in all his glory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Draco and Harry we see here are _not_ the canon versions. They are very _similar_ , yes, but not the same. They are different people.
> 
> The Harry in this fic has been abused more heavily. This causes him to create a sort of separate facade (kind of like DID, but not exactly) that he wears in Hogwarts, pushing all the trauma away and acting the part of the shy, adventurous, boy.
> 
> He cannot let anyone _know_ about the abuse; it's been drilled into him since childhood, so he hides all the trauma away, in 'Summer Harry', who comes out when he returns to Privet Drive. He's never been able to heal from the trauma, because he goes back, essentially to his personal hell, _every_ summer. 'Summer Harry' is blank, much less emotive- he's a survivor. 
> 
> 'Summer Harry' lacks some of the morals that 'Hogwarts Harry' has; he has to _survive_. (Yes, 'Hogwarts Harry' is in almost constant danger, too, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that flying away from dragons is more enjoyable than getting beaten and starved.) 'Summer Harry' is much more willing to do anything in order to be safe.
> 
> Now, Draco. This Draco is less arrogant. He's been beaten and _Crucio-ed_ , so yes, he is abused as well, but I wouldn't say this has anything to do with that. He's just less of a dick, okay? (Which does mean that since he's less of a git, it stands to reason that he was consequently less of a git to Harry.)
> 
> He loves his mother and Saorise, the two beings who love him the most. Saorise's only- _only_ \- loyalty is to him, which, to Draco- a child whose parents don't really show a lot of affection, who's been treated as a pawn his whole life, who's been tortured, means a _lot_. (Background info: he got Saorise a year ago)  
> So, because Harry's been abused and basically has developed a second personality to deal with his trauma, (wait, scratch that- his ~original~ personality is what's dealing with it- the blank, unemotive, survivor. the happy, adventurous, boy is the second personality. okay, continue) one might wonder as to his mental walls, i.e. his Occlumency skills. Well, suffice it to say- Harry indeed has some good fucking Occlumency walls, although they aren't Draco-level (let alone _Snape_ -level). What I mean to say is that in light of his trauma, he has also erected pretty thicc *hehe* walls to block people out. However, when he's 'Hogwarts Harry' he uses them to wall off the abuse from the rest of his mind so it doesn't show in his mannerisms (you can't hide it all, though, which is why he'll sometimes flinch when he doesn't mean to). 
> 
> Let's take a moment to talk about Harry's skills. So, as we can see, he has indeed ventured into the ~Dark Arts~ as a method of self-defense, given that the ~Light~ shit is just not cutting it. (Draco is actually wrong to say that Harry doesn't know Parselmagic- the thing is that Harry does know it, and is indeed practiced in it, given that Parselmagic doesn't have as much need for a wand b/c it's inherently more powerful, but he doesn't use it or have a snake familiar because he doesn't want to freak out his utterly Gryffindorish 'Light' friends.) Also, boy's putting up some kinda powerful blood wards. Needless to say, this ain't your regular mediocre Harry. He does still get average good-ish grades, but this is for one reason and one reason only: Aunt Petunia used to scream at him for getting better marks than Dudley. It's common practice for him to learn and study very hard, consuming all the material and mastering the subject (because, as he knows, knowledge is needed to survive and he never knows when he'll be in danger), and then, when it comes time to present all his mastery , he just.... doesn't. 
> 
> Basically, in this AU at least, Harry doesn't show at least 60% of his potential (he does have about 80% harnessed for use in truly dangerous situations, but he's learned not to outshine people). Not to worry, this will soon change. (or, not soon, exactly? Three chapters? Four? Is that soon? *shrugs*
> 
> Also, this fic will have some minor Dumbledore-bashing. Not a fan of major bashing, but the thing is Dumbles is such a fucking manipulative _bastard_ that reading fics where he's portrayed as this super nice guy is just sickening to me- i can't write a Good Dumbledore fic, it'll give me hives, I swear

* * *

Draco wakes at exactly 6 o’clock, slipping off his pyjamas and folding them in a precise pile at the foot of his bed, pulling on his robes in sharp, measured, movements, fingers nimbly doing up the stays and ties; at this point, it’s second nature. 

He smooths his hair, flattening it with a few muttered charms until it’s sleek and coiffed, checks his Occlumency barriers, examines his reflection in the mirror for any imperfections. There are deep bruises under his eyes; he charms them away with half a thought. Granger may surpass him in the theoretical department (he generally can’t be bothered to write twice the required length for extra credit), he’s excellent at the practical department; he is a Malfoy, after all. Precision, _control_ , is drilled into him, bone-deep. 

“Saorise,” he murmurs (someday, soon, he’ll be able to wake her in _her_ language), “Wake up, you lazy worm.” 

She stirs and hisses at him. Draco conjures two white mice for her, tosses them to her, watches as she rears and attacks them, lightning personified. 

“Stay here, Saorise.” Draco murmurs, glaring at her when she hisses. He doesn’t want the Dark Lord to know about her, something about the idea of a Parselmouth he does not trust- trust _Voldemort_ , the idea is laughable - in the vicinity of _his_ snake. She slithers to his pillow and curls up on it, slitted eyes narrowed at him. 

“Good girl,” Draco says with asperity, and he leaves, closing the door with a soft _snick_ , his wand tucked in a holster at his belt. 

Thankfully, the Dark Lord Voldemort is not present at the breakfast table, although Bella is, her dark hair falling in sleek curls, her heavy-lidded eyes alive with intelligence and cunning and just a graze of madness (it is, after all, but 6 o’clock). “Baby Malfoy!” She coos when Draco takes a seat and helps himself to some toast. 

He inclines his head. “Aunt Bellatrix.” 

She gives him a sharp-edged smile, the sort he’d been taught to craft at the tender age of six, _your smile must have fangs, Dragon, you show them that you will tear them apart_ , leaking with ice and malice, dripping blood and Unforgivables. 

Not hatred, never hatred. _You don’t give them the satisfaction, Dragon. Hatred shows you care, and you can never afford to let them know._

Draco wonders how long it had been since Narcissa had called him her Dragon. 

“Soon, we will bestow upon you a _great_ honor.” Bella lilts, the madness in her eyes stirring to life. “The Dark Lord himself has chosen, yes, chosen _you_ for a _great_ honor.” 

“Oh?” Draco asks carefully. There is an acid taste in his mouth; he sets his toast down, politely fixing his attention on Bella. A great honor, that must mean- 

“You are to be given the honor of a _mission_ , Draco,” Bellatrix sings, red lips curving into a mockery of a smile. 

His Occlumency barriers are a meter thick, walls of cold iron and steel and stone, but he reinforces them in case, layering them with Dark Magic and curses so foul that Dumbledore would probably faint; he cannot show weakness. 

Draco cocks his head, smiles disarmingly. “A mission? How am _I_ to assist the Dark Lord?” 

Bellatrix cackles so hard tears spring to her eyes; she dabs at them with a polished talon (since her return, she has been cleaned up, most likely at the behest of the Dark Lord). “You’ll see soon enough, baby Malfoy.” 

She refuses to elaborate, no matter how delicately he approaches the matter, no matter how bluntly. 

* * *

Bellatrix is a disgrace. Pureblood nobility do not _cackle_ , they do not show their slavish devotion, they do not grovel like _pigs_. Slytherins; certainly not.

She is mad. She is broken. She is loyal to a fault; Draco wonders if she would not have made an excellent Hufflepuff. 

She would most likely Crucio him until he was as mad as her if he said it aloud. 

* * *

“You will learn about poisons,” Narcissa says during a lull in the breakfast conversation, tucking a strand of her long pale hair behind her ear. “I will teach you myself.”

Draco nods; says nothing. 

* * *

Narcissa, on the other hand, is the epitome of a Lady of an Ancient and Noble House, of a Slytherin. She is beautiful, all dark Black eyes and soft pale hair. Icy when confronted with enemies, warm with him (not lately, but he remembers it still; how intently she would listen as he babbled about his day, how she taught him to be strong enough to withstand the weight of the world, the softness of her hands as she smoothed his hair, the letters she wrote him- writes him - her elegant quillwork taking up five pages, at least).

She can tear a man to shreds with refined vowels and a cold smile; he’s seen her tossing Unforgivables as casually as breathing. 

She loves him so, so, much; he wonders what he ever did to deserve it. 

* * *

He doesn’t have time to research for the blood ritual- after breakfast, Narcissa takes him into the greenhouse room and proceeds to shock him. 

(People look at his mother and father and see Lord Malfoy and his wife, but Narcissa is the deadliest of them; sweet colorless poison that sprawls in your veins and twines black, Black, fingers through your circulatory system and kills you soundlessly.) 

Draco is alright with plants and things, he thinks- he knows how to identify belladonna and how to extract foxglove essence, has memorized practically every potion recipe he’s been taught from head to footnote, but Narcissa is _terrifying_. She identifies half a dozen poisonous plants in the space of a few seconds and arranges them from least poisonous to most deadly in a flash; her fingers are precise and careful as they draw venom from a Stunned taipan. She murmurs tales to him of poisoning and espionage as she tips a few drops in a cup of tea, shows him how to stir quickly, quietly, wandlessly. 

Afterwards, Narcissa smiles at him. Her lips move against his hair, murmuring something sacred, and she withdraws, a pale hand lingering on his shoulder. “Make me proud, Draco.” 

He promises he will. 

* * *

The days blur together in a haze of poisons and Parseltongue practice; gone is the summertime delirium in France, if it ever existed.

The Dark Lord Voldemort does not emerge once; Draco assumes he is away, doing something suitably Dark Lord-ish. Draco does not enquire as to what it is. 

Finally, it’s the night he marked for the ritual, and Draco cannot wait. He eats his dinner as fast as is polite, forcing himself to walk to his room in a leisurely manner, forces himself to wait until midnight, when no one walks the grounds but the peacocks (they hate him and he hates them; they have a mutual agreement to keep their distance). 

It’s the witching hour (when he discovered that particular Muggle name for midnight, he laughed so hard he almost cried) when he sneaks out, an Undetectably-Extended bag carrying the elements of the ritual. 

Saorise is weaving agitatedly on his neck; she’s been in a state of high excitement lately. Draco thinks she knows. 

He sets the ritual, the athame, pentagon, chalice, wand, in their allocated positions. He breathes deeply, takes his wand, purifies the air, and casts a ritual circle, walking clockwise. It shines brightly in the shifting shadows. 

He sets Saorise in the center of the circle, and she wreathes slowly, scales glinting. Draco concentrates on the magic, concentrates on the wand movements he’s memorized, the sinuous undulation of it. 

_O domine Magia_ , Draco intones, facing north, _ego voco super animo meo, Salazar Slytherin. Ipsum interrogate me; super possum loqui lingua colubris? Discam a lingua colubris?_

He repeats it, facing east, south, and west, respectively. The Magic is alive now, sharp and interested and alert. 

He takes the sacrifice (a lamb, white and perfect, stillborn) and slits it on the altar. 

The Magic strikes, seizing the lamb and the soft gushes of blood from its dead heart, _consuming_ it. His hands painted with blood, he scrawls the correct runes on his palm, and then reaches out for Saorise. The Magic tightens its hold; the air is taut and watchful. What Saorise does next will determine everything. 

She slides up his forearm, bare and slender in the moon, her tongue flicking at the blood pooling in his palm. 

The Magic loosens all at once, releasing gusts of energy into him. _Yes._

_Yes_ , he has latent Parseltongue abilities, _yes_ , he will be able to learn it, _yes_ Salazar approves of him, _yes yes yes yes_. 

Draco finishes the ritual, dispelling the ritual circle widdershins and shaking with happiness and relief; his laughter wavers in the silence and sounds like a sob. 

* * *

Parseltongue, besides the obvious factor of genetics, is like any other language, so there must be a book that explains it.

Unfortunately, he can’t find any. He scours the family library and finds no language manuals, most likely because no one’s discovered that you can _learn_ Parseltongue. He does find a few titles, which he resolves to find in Knockturn as soon as he can. 

He memorizes Dark curses, spells for expelling entrails, spells for leaving the victim drowning in their own blood. When he coughs, he half-expects to leave Darkness behind. 

The trouble is that Draco is more magically inclined to healing spells (which he discovered after Narcissa drilled the need for them into him), naturally more inclined to the, well, _lighter_ side of Dark Magic. 

Narcissa sees and promises not to tell, her brow creasing in worry, but he knows it might be a problem, when the world expects him to be cold and imposing and certainly not with a knack for _healing magic_ \- but healing magic _is_ useful. 

A week after he performs the blood ritual, the Dark Lord calls him into the ballroom. 

His father stands at the Dark Lord’s side, sleek pale hair falling around his white, set, face. Draco looks exactly like Lucius, but it doesn’t bother him as much it used to. He doesn’t have the- the heart to care. (Again, and again. So many things he doesn’t have the _heart_ for, so many things he will-not-should-not-cannot care about. He wonders if his heart has grown smaller, icy in captivity, hardening and shrinking into a sharp compact thing.) 

“Draco,” the Dark Lord hisses, and Draco kneels smoothly, eyes trained respectfully on the panels of _his family’s ballroom_ until his eyes water and his knees ache. 

A hissing laugh; “Rise.” Draco concentrates on his Occlumency barriers, smoothing on curses; here, a curse that’ll freeze the blood in your veins; here, a curse that’ll turn every bone in your body to dust. His face is expressionless; the consummate pureblood son. 

The Dark Lord tilts his skull, red eye glinting. Draco does not relax, does not bat an eye, does not move a muscle. 

“You will take my Mark.” The Dark Lord says at length, and while Draco’s walls are meters thick and coated in ice and magic, he can’t stop the small inhalation of breath. 

The Dark Mark- it’s permanent, as far as Draco can tell, and the idea of having the mark of a _monster_ seared into his skin is- it’s _repulsive_ , he has to mask a recoil. 

The Dark Lord is watching him still, and Draco has to _say_ something- anything. 

“While it is an honor, my Lord, perhaps it would not be prudent to take the Mark while I am still to return to Hogwarts- the headmaster already has suspicions.” Draco says as calmly as he is able. 

The Dark Lord laughs and Draco has no doubt that he has seen through Draco’s flimsy excuses; a flash of fear locks his knees. 

“Most… thoughtful of you, Draco.” Voldemort whispers softly, resting his skull on a single white palm. The sibilant sound of voice sends shivers through Draco; he sets his feet slightly further apart, bracing his weight more steadily. 

“But your caution is misplaced. You will take the Mark without my magic; you have not yet earned it.” 

Relief rushes through Draco, so overwhelming he has to raise his Occlumency shields still higher and add a trace of disappointment to his voice as he assents. 

“Now, onto the next matter, I have a task for you, Draco.” Voldemort smiles, his red eyes very bright. Draco wants to run and hide, wants to crawl into the safety of his mind behind his impenetrable walls. He can’t. 

Draco widens his eyes. “A task, my Lord?” 

“You are to kill Albus Dumbledore.” The monster hisses, and Draco smiles. 

* * *

The thing is, he hates Dumbledore.

Always has. 

He plays favorites like you wouldn’t believe; he hates Slytherins and purebloods, though he comes from an ancient line himself. He claims to be unprejudiced, but Draco knows better. 

In their first year, when Potter got on a broom after being expressly told not to, he was _given the Seeker position_. “ _Youngest Seeker in a century!_ ” they said, never mind the fact that he was the youngest Seeker because up until then, _first-years weren’t allowed brooms_. 

All Draco got was two weeks worth of detention. 

When Potter had trespassed onto the forbidden third floor corridor after curfew and _killed a teacher_ he was given _sixty House points_. (People nattered on about how he’d stopped Voldemort, but if Dumbledore had wanted to hide the Stone, he wouldn’t have announced to the _entire school_ its location, wouldn’t have let a possessed teacher into the DADA position. No, Dumbledore had known what he was doing.) 

When a basilisk was haunting the grounds, Dumbledore did _nothing._ (Granted, Lucius had removed him from the position of Headmaster. Small victories.) 

It had taken a _second-year_ student to stop the killings. 

When an escaped convict had been on the loose, what had Dumbledore done? Hired a _werewolf_ with personal ties to the very same convict! (Oh, yes, he knew all about that. His parents _had_ attended school with the Marauders, after all.) 

When the Triwizard tournament had come up, Dumbledore had allowed a _fourth-year_ student into the tournament. ( Never mind the magical-contract rubbish; if Potter hadn’t written the name himself, it wasn’t binding.) 

(Fifth-year had been beautiful- he hates Umbridge, of course, the barbaric woman, but she’d been useful.) 

Yes, he hates Dumbledore. 

He just doesn’t know if it’s enough. 

* * *

They go to Knockturn the next morning, Draco citing his need to prepare for his task. His murder mission; his suicide mission.

He finds two suitable books on Parseltongue in Borgin and Burke’s and pays for them under the guise of buying books on rare poisons. 

He shrinks them and stows them in his pocket, excitement fizzing in his veins. 

* * *

Lately, Saorise is the only thing keeping him awake, alive. If it weren’t for the promise of Parseltongue, of being able to understand the one creature alive whose loyalty is to him and only him, he wonders if he would not have just- just ended it all.

(But no. He is a Malfoy, he has _duties_. Malfoys do not ‘end it’. Such a Hufflepuff way to phrase things, anyway.) 

He sequesters himself in his rooms, only emerging for meals and lessons with Narcissa . He decides on slipping the poison in the old fool’s lemon drops; it’s easiest, although the thought makes him feel sick, panicky. 

When he is not researching murder tactics, he is studying Parseltongue. 

Parseltongue is fascinating, honestly, and he is disgusted by the negligence with which Potter treats it. He barely even uses the gift. 

There is a written language, Parselscript, which is full of curves and sinuous accents; he studies the alphabet furiously and manages to memorize it in two days. Spells incanted in Parseltongue are more powerful; words spoken in Parseltongue are generally more truthful (snakes don’t lie, after all, and Parseltongue functions like a low-grade Veritaserum. Draco resolves to practice lying in it as soon as he can; he can’t afford not to). 

It takes him a while to get used to the pronunciation, the sibilant hissing- he can do it, the latent Parseltongue traits are under his skin, in his veins, but he has to cast a _Muffliato_ beforehand because he’s fairly sure that Saorise’s laughing at him. 

Still, he can tell that she’s excited about it, that she knows what he’s doing. He wonders just how much she knows, how much she can converse, and feels a thrum of anticipation deep in his belly, his muscles relaxing for the first time in days- _weeks_ , really. 

Knowledge does this to him, poring over old books and practicing spellwork until it’s perfect, stirring Potions and slipping into a dreamy haze. Control, precision. 

Merlin, he sounds like Granger. 

He can’t help thinking what Granger would think if she saw his trunk- he doesn’t sleep in the bed at Hogwarts, he sleeps in his trunk, with its large, soft, sheets and the space and the small pond with darting fish. In it are crammed dozens and dozens of books; highly theoretical Potions texts and ancient Dark tomes (warded and glamoured with the most effective spells he knows), first-editions and signed copies. 

She’d probably wet herself in excitement. 

Draco finds communicating with Saorise fairly easy- he still can’t help the rush of disbelieving excitement whenever he talks to her - but that’s because he’s _used_ to the sound of her hissing, he can differentiate between the different syllables and intonations. At night, he whispers _serpensortia_ over and over again, conjuring cottonmouths and corn snakes and kingsnakes, practicing his pronunciation and getting acquainted with the different ‘accents’, until he is surrounded by snakes and still, he cannot get enough. It’s addictive, this power, and he can’t believe Potter hasn’t taken full advantage of it. 

He stumbles over words for the first few days, even with the Language-Learning potion he brewed on the sly and takes everyday, but, as Saorise’s been limited to conversing with other, ‘boring’, snakes for months now, she’s happy to talk to him, for hours on end. 

_It is slaughter_ \- no, _supper time_ , he always mixes the two up, she says now, lazily twining around his waist. Draco raises a brow at her, hissing _Are you trying to tell me something?_

She emits an annoyed hiss, and Draco laughs, conjures a few white mice for her. He has to get back to his poisons, he has to plan. He’d originally thought of the lemon drops that the old fool is so fond of, but he offers them to every student who enters his office, and Draco is many things, but not a murderer. 

Well. He supposes he is, now. 

The thought makes him shiver, muscles twitching slightly. The combination of hours and _hours_ of hunched-over poisoning practice and the daily _Crucio_ that the Dark Lord inflicts (he wants Draco to push past the pain, to not cry, to not make a sound, to be like _Bella_ , who can take Voldemort’s _Crucio_ s laughing, and Draco isn’t sure whether to be disgusted or relieved at the thought of becoming more like his aunt) have made him trembly, shaky. He has new muscles, yes, but torture is not good for the human body. 

(He has to brew a vat of Cruciatus Potion on the sly, hoping beyond hope that it will be enough to last him the summer.) 

Anyway, he has to come up with something better, he cannot fail his father as his father failed him. 

* * *

Privet Drive is cool, quiet in the night. Earlier, Vernon had beat him, puce and sweating and drunk out of his mind, and Harry had yearned for his wand, _itched_ for it, wanting to cast a _Lacero_ , wanting to watch blood drip down his uncle’s quivering body.

The thought doesn’t disgust him as it should; Harry feels… numb. Blank. Pain no longer has much of an effect on him; he is too used to it. 

_Wandless magic_ , he thinks after a few hours of blankness. 

He’s been able to cast it since he was a child, healing his bruises and unlocking doors and slipping whisper-thin tendrils through the tiniest spaces to spy for him. The wizarding world calls it ‘accidental magic’, but it doesn’t- it would _never_ \- feel accidental to him- it is necessary. He needs it now. 

Harry slips out of his shirt, the thin cotton twisting between his fingers, and observes the bruises on his body. Not above the shirt, never above the shirt, no one can know. 

It’s not as bad as it could be, honestly. The bruises litter his body like bodies on a battlefield, the most recent ones an inky violet, fading fingerprints of yellow-green dotting the curvature of his ribs. 

_It doesn’t matter,_ he tells himself, because it’s what he has to _do_ , to survive. _It doesn’t matter, they don’t matter_ , because if it _does_ , if they matter, then he’ll be eaten up _alive_. 

Slowly, carefully, Harry spreads fingers on the bruises and concentrates. He can’t get all of them- he leaves the biggest ink-colored bruise on his hip, but he gets most of the fresh bruises, watching as they fade. Yellow green, the color of safety. 

(No one can know, if they did, if they did- there’s nothing that scares him more, not even Voldemort, not even the swing of the frying pan and Vernon Dursley’s meaty fists and the bulge in his slacks when he’s hungry. If they _knew_ \- 

He cannot _imagine_ anything more horrifying, more mortifying.) 

That taken care of, Harry reverts his attention to his book. Hermione- well, maybe not Hermione, she’s always been one for the _knowledge is power_ dogma, but certainly Ron, certainly Dumbledore - would be horrified. 

_Magick Moste Evil_ , the title reads, and it’s not a misnomer. Locked tightly in his trunk are several volumes of the same persuasion ( _Secrets of The Darkest Arts, The Tale of Herpo the Foul, A Beginner’s Guide to Blood Magick, A Parselmouth’s Primer_ ), and _yes_ Ron would most likely be horrified and renounce their friendship but it doesn’t _matter_ because he will never find out. 

Ron hasn’t lived through bruises and beatings and days spent weak with hunger and fatigue, no, Ron spends his summers at the Burrow, laughing and eating to his heart’s content and having the audacity to be _jealous_ of Harry’s money- 

Harry inhales, quickly. 

When he’s at Privet Drive, he gets angry too often, he feels surges of resentment towards Ron, tidal waves of hatred towards Dumbledore. (Ron doesn’t _know_ , he comforts himself. Ron doesn’t _know_ , and he would care if he knew.) 

Dumbledore, though. Harry hates him, _hates_ him, during the summers, hates him for his twinkling blue eyes and grandfatherly beam and _I’m sorry, Harry, but you must remain in your relative’s loving care_ \- he’d had the _nerve_ to say that to Harry once, as if he didn’t know _exactly_ how bad things were, _as if he hadn’t been the one to fucking put him there_ \- 

Harry’s breathing too hard, panting and digging his nails into his palms; he takes a deep breath. Blood is dripping from his nails. 

(It’s a good thing, actually- Harry has some blood magic he needs to start on.) 

It’s a pity he hasn’t his wand- if he had his wand, he’d have _them_ locked in a cupboard instead, he’d inflict on them _exactly_ what they’ve done to him, not a beating more, not a broken bone less. 

(It frightens him, sometimes, how little he cares about them, how he’d be happy to see their beautiful perfect house with its beautiful perfect tiles and beautiful perfect kitchen go up in flames. He tells himself it’s fair- because it _is_ , because he may be a fundamentally good person but even a fundamentally good person can _hate_ with a passion so fierce it’s cold as ice- and continues to practice Dark Magic during the summer, warding his room with blood magic and going over the theory- the theory, because he cannot practice because he does not have his _wand_ \- of Dark curses.) 

It all comes down to his wand, doesn’t it. 

The thing is, he’d be able to conjure- well, one cannot conjure food, it goes against Gamp’s - he’d be able to _multiply_ the little amount of food he receives and preserve it, he’d be able to practice the Dark spells he wants to, he’d be able to more thoroughly heal himself and ward himself against harm, he’d be able to strike fear in their hearts and make sure he’s safe- with his wand. 

But Vernon Dursley takes it away at Platform 9 and 3/4 every summer, ever since his one and only attempt last year, when he’d transfigured a random stick into a wand and slipped his real wand into his waistband. He’d had them at his mercy for two delicious hours, before Dumbledore had shown up, blue eyes twinkling in a disappointed manner, telling Harry that he was _so sorry_ , but since magic _could not be practiced outside of Hogwarts_ he’d have to return his wand to their care. 

(It’s for that act that Harry hates Dumbledore- he’d given the Dursley’s their freedom, given them what they needed to become brave enough to torment him further. It’s something he’ll never, _ever_ forgive, even at Hogwarts, but Dumbledore doesn’t need to know that- if he finds out, Harry shudders to think of what he will let the Dursleys do.) 

Fortunately, blood magic requires no wand. 

(Blood magic is how he’d segued into the Dark Arts- he’d been looking for a way to protect himself without his wand, his wandless magic not being impressive enough to protect him at all hours of the day, and he’d stumbled across a book on blood magic in the Restricted Section, back in third year. Blood magic was ‘Dark’, was ‘evil’, but if it protected him, how evil could it be? Harry had made a duplicate of the book and hidden it in his robes. After that, he’d kept going, wandering to the Restricted Section in his Cloak as soon as he’d determined that Ron was asleep, devouring books on the Dark Arts, making copies of absolutely everything relevant and tucking it in his trunk.) 

Harry takes the small knife Sirius had given him- _Sirius_ , the thought of him still makes his chest crumple, cave, _it was all his fault_ and Dumbledore had done fucking nothing, gazing at Harry with those twinkling, twinkling, eyes and smiling and saying _you will bleed to death with the pain of it_ and didn’t he know that Harry already _was_ , that he’d bled to death a hundred thousand times? - and slits his palm, collecting the blood in a teacup he’d tripped over last night. 

From there, he takes the ceremonial brush (okay, it’s a pencil with locks of Harry’s hair bound to it with a Sticking charm) and begins, glancing at the book occasionally, for reference. The runes he paints on the doorjamb are fairly Gray in nature, because while he wouldn’t be too put out to have Vernon Dursley mutilated and _bleeding to death with the pain of it_ on the cool hardwood floors, that would raise questions and questions would raise Dumbledore and the Light Side and then he’d be dead, dead, dead. 

Instead, the runes guarantee painful itching and hair loss if any of the Dursleys cross the threshold with intent to harm, and second-degree burns if they actually _do_. 

(It’s particularly ingenious, actually- he’s keyed the runes to them, while managing to exclude himself, through the advent of scrawling the runes in his own blood. Hermione herself wouldn’t be able to undo it, and she’s the one who takes Ancient Runes.) 

Finally, he’s finished, and Harry wandlessly dries them- he can’t have them smearing. 

They will do well next time Vernon Dursley comes to pay a visit to Harry’s bedroom. 

* * *

It’s not that he _can’t_ do it, Draco thinks when he’s alone, him and Saorise the only living things in his room, because, truth be told, he’d love to see Dumbledore dead, but- well, that’s just it, isn’t it? He’d love to see Dumbledore dead- he doesn’t want to be the one to kill him.

* * *

Harry curls up late at night, petting Hedwig absentmindedly. She coos softly, nipping at the skin of Harry’s wrist with the brassy sharpness of her beak. A drop of blood. (Harry heals it with a murmured _Episkey_.)

(Sometimes, it’s hard for Harry. The thin skin of his wrists is so _pale_ , so _translucent_ , the blue veins underneath so easily traced. What would they look like hollow, the blood drained and gone? He could split those veins, easily, _oh_ , he could take a cold clean piece of silver and watch the red well up in perfect, gleaming, beads and drain away. He wears long-sleeves these days, trying not to look at the oh-so-tempting veins of his wrists; he is afraid of what he might do.) 

Hermione’s written to him; a lengthy five pages of parchment, scrawled with her neat, tiny, handwriting. Ron, too- a brisk page, skimming around the topic of the Order. He should probably- 

* * *

_Kill him_ , the Dark Lord intones. Draco nods, but his eyes betray him and Voldemort snarls _crucio_ and his high, bell-like laughter peals through the ballroom-

* * *

Answer, pen his reply, keep it bright and cheery and casual. For a brief moment, Harry wonders what would happen if he answered truthfully, if he replied to Hermione’s _how are you doing?_ with _I haven’t eaten in six days_ , if he responded to Ron’s brusque _hope the muggles are treating you alright_ with _actually, I’m being used as a personal punching bag, I have two new scars, and I’ve been engaging highly illegal blood magic in order to keep Uncle Vernon from raping me_.

The thought amuses him as so few things do and he laughs and laughs and _laughs_ \- 

* * *

Oh, how the Dark Lord laughs, how beautiful it is, like petals, like silk, and Draco feels a wave of disgust through the endless pain because monsters should not sound like clear running water and sweet silver bells-

* * *

Oh, how they would treat him, if they knew.

Ron would be disgusted, horrified. He’d claim it didn’t make a difference to him, but if Harry looked into his eyes he would see the pity and disgust. 

Hermione would handle it better; she would order dozens of books on the psychological damage of child abuse and handle everything in the most politically correct way possible, sickeningly careful and gentle in her interactions with him, as if he were some unspeakably delicate treasure fashioned of glass rather than a boy who had been broken so many times before that his scars had scars had scars. 

( _Do you have it? The scar_? people whisper to him every minute every hour every day and he wonders what would happen if he slipped off his robes and presented his bare back to them, if he allowed them to see the lashes and the bruises and the cigarette-burns, if he said _which scar? I have plenty_ , if he showed them that he was not their precious savior, that if anything, he was the Boy-Who- _Survived_. Pandemonium, probably. Chaos. Viewpoints upended, ideals shattered. Dumbledore would be dragged in the papers, his name scarred for life and _he would deserve every last second of it_.) 

* * *

When the Dark Lord relents, Draco is trembling, shivering. _Nagini,_ the Dark Lord hisses, and Draco wills himself not to show understanding, wills his eyes to appear blank and dull. _Frighten the boy_ , the Dark Lord hisses at length, and Draco almost wants to laugh, too.

It would be intimidating, terrifying, if he didn’t speak Parseltongue as well, having the enormous snake slither to his side and drape over his body, but as it is Voldemort seems almost like a schoolyard bully. 

He does not let the flicker of amusement show on his face; he breathes a fog of icy mist around his thick stone walls and snow falls, thickening his defenses further. 

* * *

It’s a relatively new thing, as far as these things go.

Cigarette burns have always been there; beltings have been administered since he was seven and beatings since he was six but this- this _thing_ that has Uncle Vernon pushing Harry against a wall, his puce face shining and sweaty, all fat hands and the rasp of a belt buckle and heavy panting, it only just started after the Triwizard Tournament, when he was sleepless and pale and weak with nightmares of Cedric and the graveyard, when he was too tired to put up that much of a fight. 

He remembers the first time. Aunt Petunia and Dudley had been out of the house, shopping for his new Smeltings uniform (since his diet, his physique had changed considerably), and Harry had just ventured out of his room for a piece of toast- and then Uncle Vernon was there, a strange glint in his eye, a magazine full of lurid busty women in his paws, a bulge in his gray slacks. 

Harry had stifled a snort, and then Uncle Vernon- God, the man isn’t his _uncle_ , he is disgusting and vile and he is _not Harry’s uncle_ \- had backed him against a wall. “Uncle Vernon-” Harry had said, uncertainly, and then Vernon twisted him, pushing his stomach against the wall and hefting his weight against Harry’s back, grinding his hardness against Harry, the sheaf of busty women clenched in his fist until he came in a burst of wetness. 

Harry had scrambled away as soon as he relented, face crimson and nausea swirling in him, banging his knees several times on the way to the toilet (he’d vomited for what felt like hours, coughing up bile and stomach acid, the feeling of Vernon’s sweat smearing on his skin), disbelief and shock and horror and mortification tight in his chest. _They can never know about this, no one can ever know,_ Harry had thought, already picturing the disgust on everyone’s faces. He’d carved runes into his skin of purity and defense with a silver needle, but the needle had been stolen from Aunt Petunia’s sewing basket and didn’t work (the scars were still there, though; thin white lines on his forearms, so faint that people never noticed) and he was a fucking _wizard_ but he couldn’t do a _fucking thing_ when Vernon cornered him next, heavy weight and bulges of fat pressing him to the carpeted floor, hot wet breath in his ear. 

He’d had to up his defenses, only emerging from his room when Petunia and Dudley were there, but then the next time (Petunia was called away on an emergency social call and Dudley had wandered off with rat-faced Piers) Vernon had gone a step further, yanking his jeans down and rutting against his bare skin and no matter how Harry had hit him, no matter how many times Harry had _tried_ to summon his wandless magic, the haze of panic and disgust and fear was too strong and he couldn’t stop it- 

Vernon is getting hungry again; Petunia is going away for a week to see an old friend and Dudley is hardly ever in the house anymore. He’s been relying on the locks on his door but Vernon could break down the door easily and it’s for that reason that Harry’s erected rudimentary blood wards around his room. 

Hedwig hoots again, softly, and Harry snaps his head up. Vernon, he has time to think, Vernon will come in if she hoots again- 

* * *

Draco drinks a flagon of Cruciatus Potion after dinner; the trembling in his twitching muscles eases somewhat. This time, it had been that he didn’t have a definitive plan ( _And how are you planning to murder the fool?- Poison, my Lord - Oh? And what poison would that be?- I… I have not yet decided on a single - You have not yet decided? - No, my lord - Tell me, what are you doing in your room, with all your books on poisons, if you have not yet decided?- I.. my Lord, I apologize - Do you require me to… remind you how important your task is?- No, my Lord- Crucio_.)

He responds to letters from Pansy, Millie, and Blaise (he’s not actually certain if Crabbe and Goyle are literate), tucking hidden meanings and double entendres in every other line; he is a Slytherin, after all. 

He hands the letters to Ulysses, watching as his owl carries them away, and feels lighter than he has in days. 

It doesn’t last long, of course, but. Still. 

* * *

Harry scrambles across the room, hissing _Collorportus_ at the door and unlatching the birdcage in a panicked slide. The door locks with a definitive _click_ \- it’ll buy him time - and he releases Hedwig out the window, knowing she will be better off if she never returns.

He draws in a panicked breath- he’d hoped to do this later, but he needs to do it _now_ \- and sends his magic arcing into the runes, into the blood magic, activating it. 

They glow, briefly, and he feels a spurt of hope. 

* * *

At long last, he decides on a magically-enhanced brew with deadly extracts of nightshade and water hemlock. He bottles it and coats in layer after layer of thick, protective, magic.

There’s a knock on the door, and Draco’s head snaps up. “Draco, darling, the Dark Lord wishes to speak with you.” 

Panic freezes in his chest; he’s dismantling the heavy spellwork at his door and smoothing every aspect of his appearance in a flash of muttered Latinate. 

The Dark Lord is in the ballroom, slim and pale and erect as always. He looks the same; he always looks the same, like some monstrous wraith in guttering gray robes- timeless, some sick mockery of humanity. 

Draco bows. “My Lord.” 

Voldemort smiles; a glint of teeth. 

“I wish to discuss your… tasks.” 

_Again_? Draco thinks, and then _wait_. Tasks. Plural. 

“My Lord?” 

Voldemort tilts his head, lipless mouth curving into a smirk. “You will also be entrusted with the task of bringing my loyal Death Eaters into Hogwarts. Rodolphus will inform you of the specifics.” 

* * *

Killing Dumbledore was mildly abhorrent.

This- bringing Death Eaters into _Hogwarts_ , bringing _Bellatrix Lestrange_ and- fuck - _Fenrir fucking Greyback_ into a castle full of children- 

It’s disgusting. He can’t- Hogwarts is his home for nine months of the year, and now he is tasked with bringing murder and torture to its bright secrets and serpentine, twisting, hallways. 

He will find some way- somehow, he will do something. _Something_. 

* * *

They bring in the tattooist- a slim, balding, man with a wand as thick as a thumb. He avoids the eyes of everyone there and refuses payment (Draco also thinks he may have urinated in his pants, by the smell of it).

He takes his wand and traces the Dark Mark into Draco’s forearm. The smell of burning flesh fills the air, and he hears Bellatrix inhale deeply, giggling madly. 

It’s just a tattoo, for now. After he murders Dumbledore and brings filth into his home, the Dark Lord will animate it with his magic, and it will be there forever, Draco will never be able to remove it. 

It stings, a low burning hum, but he is no stranger to pain. (Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lucius- long pale hair and a faint smile.) 

Afterwards, Rodolphus Lestrange tells him what he has to do. There is a Vanishing Cabinet in Borgin and Burke’s that corresponds to one in Hogwarts. He needs to repair the one in Hogwarts. 

(He thinks about blasting it to smithereens, burning the sleek dark wood of it, blocking the way into Hogwarts forevermore.) 

Instead, he nods. “Yes, my Lord.” 

He is a coward, but he will survive the night. 

* * *

Vernon doesn’t come that night, although Harry stays awake all night for fear of it.

The next morning, Petunia departs. Vernon has to drive her to King’s Cross and Harry has the house virtually to himself for an entire day. 

(He scrambles to the kitchen, piles food onto a few plates, and layers it with preservation magic. It should last him a few weeks at best, one week at worst.) 

The trouble with his wand is that Dumbledore’s magic is protecting it. Harry could get past simple locks, but Dumbledore’s fucking magic is protecting it from being taken. (A fresh wave of hatred for Dumbledore laps at the shores of his mind; he shoves it down. _Later_.) 

He takes the food back to his room; buries himself in _Secrets of The Darkest Arts_. 

Most of the curses he can’t attempt with wandless magic, but he notes them down and memorizes the wand movements, the incantations, until he’s fairly certain he could get it in the first few tries. 

He practices his dueling- the movements, holding a slender twig in his hand in replacement for his wand. He knows how to fight like a Muggle; years of Harry-Hunting have taught him that much, and dueling is like boxing, sort of. 

He practices the footwork and wand movements against an invisible opponent (his bruises and aching muscles protesting all the way). He closes his eyes, pictures Vernon standing fleshy and red, pictures breaking every bone in his body, pictures casting _Crucio_ and watching him scream, holding it long enough to shatter his mind, to turn him into another Frank Longbottom. 

At some point, Dudley wanders back into the house, plucks a peach from the fruit bowl, and wanders back out, banging the door shut as he goes; the sound makes Harry start, almost dropping the twig. 

Hedwig coasts through the window, a letter for him clutched in her talons. It’s from Fred and George, something about the joke shop. 

It is afternoon when Vernon returns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i KNOW a second chapter within the week? (I tried so hard to not post it but the button was RIGHT THERE and I don't handle temptation well)
> 
> Don't get used to it
> 
> xoxo, pansexual intellectual
> 
> p.s. sorry for the jesus-christ-is-it-really-that-fucking-long Note in the beginning. As I've said, I... I don't handle temptation well. And his psychological issues needed explaining.  
> p.p.s. I’ve decided, this is going to be a series- not a _series_ series, this fic will stand alone and I most likely will not write a sequel, but an AU. As in, I’m gonna write a fanfiction of my own fanfiction and post it in the same series. Because, um. Yeah. Why am I doing this? Well, I am a tomarry shipper first, a drarry shipper second and tbh I can’t handle the pangs of guilt bc I’m not writing my primary ship. Don’t worry no snakey-Voldemort because how fucking creepy is his snake face Jesus Christ, in the AU Voldemort is going to have absorbed his Horcruxes so he’ll be pretty and more sane. Things will make sense, I hope, as much as it makes sense for things to. Make sense, that is. (Jesus Christ I need sleep). This fic won’t be done for like. Um. A few months at least, and the AU won’t be done for like the same amount of time so um. It won’t be soon, but just a heads up.  
> p.p.p.s. If you’ve been here since the beginning, you may have read something in the beginning Note for this chapter about dementors and a canon divergence and I was going to do something with that but you know what Harry’s been through _enough_. So. Feel free to blithely forget about it!


	3. look, you tore me open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Vernon Dursley is a sick fucking fuck and we all need to go collectively cannibalize him except not because I bet he tastes _awful_
> 
> also, in which draco reminisces about hippogriffs

Harry hisses a quick _Scourgify_ under his breath, ridding himself of sweat, and slams the door shut, leveraging several old bins of Dudley’s toys against the door in case the blood wards malfunction.

Vernon clomps to the kitchen; Harry hears him shuffling around the kitchen and biting noisily into a peach; the squelch of it makes Harry feel vaguely nauseous. 

Harry waits, tense, and it’s not long before Vernon is at his door. 

* * *

They go to Borgin and Burke’s within the week, and Draco threatens the man at the counter, hardly aware of what he is saying, until the stammering man tells him what he needs to know.

When he gets back to the Manor, he is confronted by Nagini, who hisses threats at him until he kneels. He gets to his feet afterwards and walks as quickly as he dares to his rooms, breathing out in relief when he sees Saorise safe and sound. 

_You cannot let the Dark Lord or his snake know of your presence,_ Draco tells her, and she consents, albeit rather grumpily. It’ll be hard to hide, Draco thinks- her scales are an iridescent blue; she is sleek and whip-like. 

He casts several layers of Notice-Me-Not charms on her scales until he is satisfied. 

The instructions were simple, and the Room of Requirement is easy enough to access. It’s what scares him, honestly- that the Vanishing Cabinet won’t need more than a few high-powered _Reparo Maxima_ s and before long, Death Eaters will flood the school. 

He talks to Saorise about it, and she hisses in agreement. _I would not let a pack of filthy vultures into a nest of hatchlings,_ she hisses, and Draco raises a brow. _Vultures?_

Saorise coils into his lap. _You called them dead-eaters. We call them vultures._

Draco laughs and laughs and _laughs_. 

* * *

The lock gives easily enough, and the weight of Vernon against the door topples the bins and then the door is swinging open and Harry is standing, armed with false confidence and a string of dark-brown runes.

“If you touch me in this room,” Harry spits, “You will be burned.” He adds a silent _so mote it be_. 

Vernon’s piggish eyes narrow and then he is in front of Harry, seizing his shirt and oh _fuck_ without skin contact- shit, he forgot to - oh fuck- 

Vernon’s hand slips, grazing Harry’s skin, and then he’s yelling, the flesh of his ring finger pink and blistering. 

Harry laughs and laughs and _laughs_ \- 

* * *

‘Death Eaters’ has always struck Draco as an exceptionally stupid name, one that lacks _creativity_. It isn’t even relevant; since when do Death Eaters a) eat the dead, b) conquer death in any way or c) consume the entity of Death?

After he’s done laughing, Draco pets Saorise, fingers scratching lightly at her scales in the way she likes. She ripples under his fingers, hissing happily. 

He curls up, casting his usual cocktail of high-powered protective warding spells, and falls asleep with Saorise tangled in his arms. 

* * *

But of course, Vernon chooses this time to have a whit of common sense and he grabs the collar of Harry’s shirt and pulls him out of the room, _out of the wards_ and _fuck_ , why the _fuck_ did he say ‘in this room’, he’s such a fucking _idiot_ -

“No, I-” Harry gasps out, but Vernon is slamming him to the ground on his stomach and yanking down his jeans- _the rasp of denim against his skin, pain_ \- and he hears the sound of Vernon’s zipper and he’s squirming, focusing as hard as he can, harder, _Expecto Patronum_ , he wheezes, because if he has ever ever needed a protecter it is _now_ \- 

No stag, no bright silvery light, no safety- 

“ _No_ -” Harry gasps out again, aiming an elbow at Vernon’s stomach- 

Vernon snarls in disgust and grabs his shoulders, pulling him up up up- 

Vernon slams him against the hard hard floor as hard as he can and Harry goes limp and is his nose broken, something must be and he is no stranger to pain, strangers don’t hurt this much- 

Darkness is blooming in the edges of his vision and he sees the darkness, welcomes it _do not go gently into that good night_ \- 

But Vernon’s meaty paws and pain, more pain, bring him back to reality and Harry is fully awake, fully aware as Vernon shoves his spit-slick dick into Harry and Harry is screaming, _screaming_ , he doesn’t want anything of Vernon’s inside him _get out get out get out_ \- 

Harry can’t move, his ribs feel split and his face is tender like hurting-things are, he can only scream (and when Vernon clamps a sweaty hand over his nose and mouth and he can’t _breathe_ , not even that) as the most monstrous thing he has ever seen shoves _into_ him, violates his most sacred space- 

“ _Reducto!_ ” Harry tries to scream from under Vernon’s sweaty palm, and then he tries nonverbal casting, _Bombarda_ and _Expulso_ and _Petrificus Totalus_ but the haze of panic and the pain in his arse is too strong and he can’t do a fucking thing he can’t do a fucking _thing_ \- 

There is blood dripping down his face and blood pooling in his arse from Vernon shoving in but Vernon doesn’t care why would he- 

Oh god oh god oh god, darkness blooms again but _he can’t let it_ who knows what he would wake up to- 

Harry is going to vomit, he’s going to- 

It _hurts_ \- 

Vernon grunts and thrusts; once, twice and then there’s a wet stinging fluid _inside_ Harry _oh god oh god oh god no_ \- 

Vernon gets up, tucking his limp dick into his slacks and Harry is already running, falling on his face in the carpet, gashing his knees and blood, more blood but he needs to get to his room- 

Harry slams the door shut and fuck there’s still liquid in his _arse_ , there is still _Vernon inside him_ \- 

“ _Evanesco!_ ” Harry shrieks over and over again, “ _Evanesco Evanesco Evanesco_ ,” and his magic rises in a tidal wave, a tsunami, darkness bleeding- 

And he’s vomiting and bleeding choking and and crying and _evanesco evanesco evanesco please please please get out get out_ \- 

Vernon was _inside him_ \- 

His magic is tearing, furious, broken, a thousand storm clouds gashing a thousand teeth and maybe the world could burn and him with it and maybe he would like it; welcome it, even- 

He’s _shattering_ \- 

How far can a broken boy break, Harry thinks dizzily; before, he was a thousand glittering shards of broken glass and now he is pulverized into _dust_ \- 

* * *

Apparently, he was sleeping during an important Death Eater meeting (Draco isn’t even a Death Eater, how was he supposed to know?) and as such, Lucius punishes him.

It’s simple, familiar, really- the cane, the cursed silver - but the Dark Lord watches this time and Draco cannot show an ounce of weakness, so he does not cry out like he wants to when the cursed silver-side of the cane strikes him upside the ribs, when he feels the bruise blooming, spreading. 

The Dark Lord laughs and laughs and _laughs_ ; delighted, and then casts some unfamiliar spell, his yew wand tracing the air elegantly. 

“My Lord?” Lucius questions, looking uncertain for the first time in ages, and Voldemort smirks. “A simple _vulnus sanandum_ will not undo your excellent work, Lucius,” the Dark Lord hisses softly. Narcissa blanches behind him. 

“Fear not, the curse is restricted to his torso,” Voldemort continues, his red gaze clinical and curious. “You are in no danger of discovery.” 

That dispensed with, he casts an idle _Crucio_ , cancels it within the minute, and rises, taking Bellatrix with him. Her eyes roll; there is blood sheathing her teeth. 

Draco gags, and as soon as the Death Eaters are gone, Narcissa rushes to his side; cool careful fingers combing through his hair, murmuring pain-relieving charms and hauling him up. 

Draco stands on shaky feet. Narcissa, behind him, supports his back. 

“I’m so _tired_ ,” Draco murmurs, leaning heavily on her shoulder, and she chokes back a sob. 

(Lucius gone, Narcissa comforting and Draco broken and bloody; this is their family.) 

* * *

Later, Harry doesn’t remember anything. There is only the breaking, the shattering, the sense of utter loss; there is only the violent fury and virulent wrath. All of his broken, jagged, edges, smashed and ground and burnt by the weight that is Vernon Dursley, every sharp edge pulverizing the other, grinding and grinding in time to Vernon's thrusts, whittling him down and prying him apart with clammy hands and cloying claws (everything smells like peaches) until he's not even broken he's not even dust he's not even human he's not even-

He's just _empty_. 

He maybe shrieks spell after spell, he maybe creates a miniature tornado, wind whirling around him and smashing picture-frames, ripping pages, tearing-pulping-shredding (it's only fair, he thinks, fuck you _fuck you_ if this is my home it should match _me_ , fuck you I am so far gone and you too); he doesn’t _remember_. 

All he knows is tearing out of the house with his messily-crammed trunk and wand and Hedwig released to the skies (she’ll find him, she always does), all he remembers is running as fast, as hard as he can. 

* * *

He ends up at the park, near where he’d met Padfoot for the first time. There’s a dull pang of loss; it echoes emptily in the blank cradle of Harry’s skull. He swallows; his throat is dry.

He curls up on the damp, dew-furred, grass with his wand clutched so tightly in his fist it feels liable to snap. He must have broken past Dumbledore’s magic somehow- he doesn’t particularly care, all that matters is that he has it now. 

He needs- he needs somewhere to stay. For the two months of summer break that there are left. Harry breathes out shakily. 

He can’t stay at the Burrow- the thought of greeting a cheerfully bemused Ron makes him feel panicky. He can’t stay at Hogwarts. He can’t- 

Grimmauld. With Sirius- gone, the house belongs to him, doesn’t it? 

Harry closes his eyes, running a absent hand over the wet, prickling, grass. “Kreacher,” Harry utters tonelessly. 

There’s a sharp _pop_! and the sour-faced house elf appears, bulbous eyes narrowed. He’s muttering something unpleasant about being forced to appear where there are so many Muggles around, but Harry can’t- can’t deal with this. 

“Kreacher,” Harry says tiredly. “Is there anybody at Grimmauld Place right now?” 

Kreacher eyes him and shakes his head. “Great,” Harry says, closing his eyes. “Can you bring me and my things to Grimmauld?” 

Kreacher nods jerkily, a bony hand gripping his elbow; there’s an awful, twisting sensation not unlike a Portkey and then they’re in the entranceway of Grimmauld Place, and Harry feels so utterly empty and there’s a deep ache in his bones but he needs to do this one thing first. 

“Kreacher, can anyone get into Grimmauld Place right now?” 

“Why is Master Harry asking?” 

“I don’t want any members of the Order, or anybody else, coming in.” 

Kreacher’s eyes widen with improbable hope. “Master Harry doesn’t want the blood-traitors and mudbloods to come in?” 

“Don’t call them that,” Harry says half-heartedly, “But yes. Could you help me with that?” 

Kreacher, who seems to be warring with his dislike for Harry and his approval at Harry’s actions, nods again and promises to ward the house against any visitors. By the satisfied glint in his eyes, Harry suspects that trespassers will be greeted with something along the lines of death and dismemberment, but he doesn’t have the heart to care. 

He lets go of his trunk and walks up the stairs, opening the first available room and curling up in the bed, letting the darkness at the edges of his vision eclipse the light. 

* * *

When he wakes, the house is quiet. He’s curled up in a room papered in Slytherin green and silver, tangled in a nest of sheets and blankets. The sheets smell fresh, like crisp laundry and cotton.

Harry sits up, curls up in his nest of blankets. He is shivering; he’s not cold. 

( _Evanesco evanesco evanesco please please please get out get out_ -) 

He feels… empty, hollowed out, as if Vernon was something akin to a Dementor, as if forcing his way _inside_ Harry broke something crucial, stole his soul from him. (Vernon had already taken so many things from him- his childhood, his morals, what made him _Harry_ \- desecrating his body and then his mind and then his soul. _)_

He sits. Waits. For a flicker of warmth, for something, _anything_ \- 

There’s a swift _pop!_ and then Kreacher is in front of him, wrinkled face eyeing him in distaste, bearing a cup of lukewarm tea. 

This is not what was taken from him; this is what he has left. What he is being given. 

After a pause, he reaches out. Cups the tea. Eyes on Kreacher, he drinks. 

* * *

  
The next few days are blurred, grayed and curling at the edges. After the first, dreamless, sleep, he is plagued by nightmares of hot, sweaty, palms and rough breath in his ear; he vomits and vomits and still he does not feel clean inside.  


He can’t _sleep_. Kreacher brings him cups of endless cups of tea and Harry drinks them all mindlessly, his stomach full and sloshing; uncaring, really. 

(About Kreacher- his opinion of Harry seems to have changed drastically. When he hears that Harry has, for all intents and purposes, decided to cut ties to the Order, he is begrudgingly hopeful; when Harry aimlessly begins carting the ‘Dark’ artifacts back into the places they belong, fingers moving out of intuition, realigning the webs of energy and snapping things into place, Kreacher lights up, when he sees Harry examining the Black family wards and working his blood into them, he is ecstatic. Funny, really, the change in attitude, the change it wrings on the house. The dingy, grimy, house is bright and opulent now, Kreacher cooking meals in freshly washed cotton; Harry barely notices it. Everything is gray, God, he just- he can’t - it doesn’t _matter_ , he wants it to _so badly_ , but all he can muster is dim satisfaction.) 

When Kreacher tentatively prods him, Harry talks. The words spill out of his mouth like the vomit he’s just spat out, a ball of tangled jargon but Kreacher understands, says nothing more on the matter besides _those filthy Muggles_ and _how dare they_ , but he vanishes for several hours and returns with specks of blood tangled in the soft cotton inside his ears. Harry thinks if he opens a Muggle newspaper, he might see headlines about the vicious assault of Vernon Dursley, and the thought makes him smile faintly. 

It helps, a little bit, and Kreacher _is_ sworn to protect the Black family secrets to the death, but he isn’t human. It wouldn’t be the same as- as talking to Hermione, because he can’t imagine talking to Ron about it, he can’t. 

But the thought of Ron and Hermione- bright laughing faces (that quote from Jane Eyre _that child of Shower and Gleam_ ) and easy chatter and parents all accounted for - makes him feel wooden; their whole selves make him feel emptier in comparison. 

(Sometimes, when he is curled up, the hollowness inside him _aching_ , when he is curled over the empty spaces in between his bones, the hollow pit of his stomach, the soft spaces in between the knobs of his spine, he feels like an altar to some unholy deity, he feels like salted earth and blood-sown seeds; what is left after a desolation is rarely pretty and there is no uglier thing than the vacancy inside him.) 

He can’t sleep but he is always, always, tired. Kreacher makes him rich, glistening, meals; everything tastes like ash in his mouth, like oxygen and saliva, like nothing at all. 

He pads over to Sirius’s room, curling up in the blankets and breathing in the fading smell of him and trying desperately not to cry. 

* * *

When the nightmares get so bad he can’t sit on his bed without a surge of remembering terror, he thinks _I want to get a big fucking snake._

The Blacks have a store of Polyjuice, and small silk bags with tufts of hair in them. Harry selects _Male, Blonde_ and he is abruptly a foot taller, with large thick-knuckled hands and soft curls. 

(The emptiness doesn’t go away.) 

He gets Kreacher to Apparate him to _Magical Menagerie_ and strides in, feeling a sense of faint, dim, delight as no heads turn to him, no whispers abound. He is not Harry Potter anymore; he doesn’t even know this body’s name. (He is anonymous to even himself.) 

He walks to the snakes section. They hiss, eyes fixed on them. He wonders if they can sense Parselmouths. 

_Are you a Speaker?_ One snake hisses, slithering close. Harry nods. _I am. I wish to purchase a very large, venomous, snake. Who should I pick?_

The snakes immediately descend into a frenzy of hisses, arguing over who’s the most venomous and who’s the longest and who’s the thickest. 

The shop owner watches in bemusement. 

Eventually, they select one snake. She’s bright yellow and about as thick as three arms. Harry bends down, making eye contact. _I am in need of a faithful friend and protecter. Are you suited for the task?_

_Yes, Master_ she hisses immediately. _Yes, I am. Yes yes yes yes yes. I will bite anybody who seeks to harm you, and they will die very quickly._

Harry chuckles faintly, more out of reflex than humor, and Vanishes a section of the glass. She slithers through immediately, curling around his neck and shoulders and trailing down his arms. Harry pays for her, ignoring the shop owner’s befuddled warnings about her high venom levels and being _careful_ because _a single drop of her venom is potent enough to kill a hundred people_. 

(She is very flattered when he translates for her.) 

Kreacher Apparates them back to Grimmauld (she apparently enjoys the sensation), and Harry curls up in his bed with her, telling her as best he can why he is in danger, what he needs, what his life looks like, who she can and cannot bite. She is outraged when she hears about Vernon, hissing _take me to the walrus now. I will bite him only a little so he dies slowly._ Harry laughs. 

_Do you have a name?_ Harry asks her. When she says no, he rifles through a book of names and lands on Aoife. He tells her it means beautiful, radiant, because she _is_ , and she preens, rippling so the sun glints off her golden scales. She knows all the little ways in which she is beautiful; Harry envies her that. 

(He knows all the little ways in which he is broken.) 

* * *

The nightmares don’t stop, after that. He wonders if they- maybe - maybe it’s like his scars, they never go away. _I must not tell lies._

But, Aoife is curled around him, monstrously large, her coils smooth and cool against his skin, and she hisses _wake up_ and he _does_. He wakes up. Out. Cool dry scales, not warm sweaty skin. Parseltongue, not English. It’s _safe_. 

* * *

Nothing, not even the Ministry, can get through the Black family wards, so Harry practices.

Again and _again_ , until his wand arm is shaking and he is soaked with sweat and still he does not relent. 

When he is trembling all over, muscles exhausted and quivering, he fills two sheaves of parchment with Dark curses that he should know. He doesn’t even know what for, but he knows that he will not be that helpless again. 

(He can’t- he can’t produce a fucking Patronus. God. He- he’s always been able to, _always_ , it’s _his_ spell, the one thing that he’s always been able to rely on, but something’s _broken_ , something’s _gone_ and the world is _gray_. It’s _gray_. He tries again and again and again, but all he manages to produce is silvery mist. Once, he sees the faint shape of something, not a stag but a four legged animal, and then it’s mist only, mist only. 

What else will Vernon take? The green of his mother’s eyes the black of his father’s hair- and God knows he’s _sick_ of it, _you look like your father but your eyes, those are your mother’s_ , like he’s a precise patchwork quilt of his parents, neat tiny stitching and tucked edges and _his mother’s nose his father’s ears his father’s hair his mother’s eyes they don’t belong to him nothing does_ , like the sum of him is comprised precisely of his parts, like there is nothing added or subtracted, like _he_ is nothing, not positive, not negative, only a clear, ringing, zero; air so clear, so unclouded, you could see the heartbeat of a sparrow from miles away, thrumming and fluttering. 

Maybe he’s always been like this, that- maybe the illusion of Harry was superfluous, extraneous. 

_I am a perfect perfect zero._ Harry thinks, strokes an idle hand down Aoife’s scales. She hisses in pleasure, eyes slitting shut, and he smiles, faintly. 

Small slices of emotion; dim fondness, sudden candle-bright anger. 

_Oh_ , it’s all he has left, _oh_ , he doesn’t mind it, much. Under it all, under the echoey grayness, there is a steady dull resolve, _they will not hurt me again._ ) 

* * *

Draco- he can’t move, not without pain. Narcissa, her face bleached white, had helped him with the charms, and through a complex cocktail of the strongest pain-easing spells they know, it is reduced to a steady ache. It’s- well, it’s the best he can hope for, really.

Narcissa holds him oh-so-delicately in her arms, and he thinks of how funny it is, that getting bruised again again again makes him stronger, and yet here he is, being held like he is made of spun glass, like he is a sweet intricate confection, thinner than glass and sweeter than sugar. 

So. He won’t be able to- _Quidditch_. The locker room- he can’t, not anymore, he can’t play, but that’s- _fine_ , it’s fine. He doesn’t need the extra distraction, anyways. 

He tilts his head down slightly, inhales the crisp fragrance of pears and elegance that hangs around her pale head in rich, moneyed, clouds. She is- home. 

“We will do what it takes to survive, Dragon.” Narcissa’s lips barely move against his skin, whispering secrets into his ear. “We will not forget this insult,” Narcissa breathes, and he feels it strengthen in his body, harden like steel exposed to cold. 

“Do not worry for me, Dragon, I can take care of myself. Do what you must.” Narcissa says at length, and Draco feels like he’s supposed to- like he’s supposed to _say_ something, like they’re on the brink of something and he has to say something before it’s too late, before one stray gust of wind tips them over the edge and it’s _too late_ , it’s too late. 

“I will, Mother,” Draco swears, and maybe that’s enough, but he doesn’t remember what he’s promising to do, doesn’t know, doesn’t have a clue, he only knows that Narcissa is relaxing, shoulders going slack again. She murmurs something like _of course_ or _I love you_ or maybe just his name, and she is gone in a cloud of scent and a strand of long petal-like hair on the carpet. 

(He doesn’t know what she would do if he said, maybe, _No, no, I can’t do a fucking thing save me help me Mother please,_ he doesn’t- No, he knows. 

She will smile, all soft pink lips screening too-white (too- _sharp_ ) teeth, and charm and kiss and murmur her and murder; those _too-sharp_ teeth grinding ill-intention to grainy gore until- well. He has never been too clear on the _until_ aspect; it has never been _his_ throat bared for her teeth. It never will be; she loves him lion-like, and it niggles at him, worries at him like an itch he cannot scratch- 

Because what did he do to _deserve_ it, he is a Malfoy and a Black and he knows that nothing comes without a price, power is bought or earned through conquest and blood and archaic full-moons bristling with Old Magic, through soft smiles and knife-like vowels; he must have done _something_. 

_She is your mother_ , a voice whispers, _She is your mother and that is all_ but surely, surely that can’t be- well, it isn’t as if he _did_ anything by being her son, is it? She’d done the work. Draco slides down and clutches at his head and he is too tired and everything hurts and there is black blotting his vision like- 

Memory comes to him, color bleeding through the dark. That day he’d been excited, unable to stop prattling on until Pansy’d wacked him across the bum with a textbook (an ordinary one, thank Merlin, he still has nightmares about The Monster Book Of Monsters and if it had bit his _arse_ it would have been awful) and told him save it for the lesson. Not that he would; _Gryffindors_ , but still. 

Potter- _Potter_ had volunteered first, of course he had, the idiot, and he’d gotten to _ride_ the bloody thing like Draco had always, in his whispered dreams (buried, long buried, heaped under meters and meters of thick black soil, tangled in the roots of elder trees and pinewood coffins) wanted. Freedom, the rush of feathers and wind and sky-things. Dirt, even, carried on a furl of wind. 

He’d bitten his lip so hard he’d drawn blood, desperation shining in his eyes until Pansy wacked him again and murmured a quick healing charm for his lip, a soft hand on his arm reminding him. 

Draco knew how to bow. 

He was a Malfoy and a Black; of course he did. His bow was flawless, knees bending, eyes steady; locked. And the hippogriff had liked him, even, its golden eyes searingly bright with some sort of grudging approval- and then, Draco’d insulted its appearance- one word, _ugly_ and he hadn’t _meant_ it, it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life and didn’t it know he wanted to climb on top of it and press his heart against it and fly with its feathers tangled in his hair, in his skin, he hadn’t _meant_ it but then the hippogriff was whirling up, golden eyes flashing, a blot a shadow a dark dark figure reeling upwards and then downwards and he knew how this went; he knew how this always went- 

- _Father please Father no Father no-_ \- 

Blood, blood and Potter’s eyes so green so _green_ , slicing into him with unerring Seeker’s accuracy, he’d always been the better Quidditch player, the better person. Oh, bloody fuck, he doesn’t want to think about _Potter_ -) 

Draco shrugs away the old canvas of hurt and longing- for _something_ , sehnsucht, that’s called, a German word. Draco tucks the point of his chin in the flat hard swoop of his collarbone and thinks about Muggle history- they’re so funny, they have all of these goddamn wars and for what? Wixen have their flaws but they’re not one for meaningless slaughter; magical blood is spare and precious - and Muggle poetry. 

Poets wrote poems about wars, Draco remembers, epics, and isn’t that just so Muggle, the idea of taking tragedy and utterly worthless death and making it into something beautiful- but then, he’s not too well-versed in war poetry, he doesn’t know, maybe it’s ugly. 

War’s ugly. Draco knows, he knows, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. War’s ugly, but it’s coming. _What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?_ (The answer: bloodshed. Collateral damage; meaningless in the long run but unavoidable.) 

Sometimes, even the magical wars seem pointless. Dark vs. Light, no one ever wins. 

(Except that isn’t exactly true: Light has been winning for decades now, pushing Dark into the shadows where some might say they belong, and Voldemort is a monster, that’s it, there’s no buts. The Dark is dying and Voldemort is a monster and there’s nothing- no one - else. Voldemort sure as fuck isn’t the solution to their problem, neither is fucking Dumbledore. Potter’s too goody-goody Light Savior, Lucius kisses the hems of a beast every night. It’s a mess, an absolute fucking mess, and only the Slytherins understand the full scope. Pansy, Blaise, Millie, even Greg and Vince to some extent, _understand._ Merlin, he misses them, and he’s going to need some way to cover the ridiculously huge, violet-colored, bruise that stubbornly refuses to be glamoured.) 

Anyway, Muggles and their wars, there are so many of them. And poetry- Muggles have better writers, that’s for sure. “Twist me a crown of wind-flowers,” he sings, and he doesn’t know why but it’s beautiful. Draco twirls his wand absently, drawing a creamy flower wreath into existence. 

Saorise hisses in delight and leaps on it, her fangs ripping the tissue-thin petals to wet shreds. Draco stares in silence, and then shrugs. It doesn’t matter that much, does it. 

* * *

It takes three weeks for Dumbledore’s owls to get past the wards, and Hedwig makes her displeasure known. Harry _Incendio_ ’s every one of them, unopened. He genuinely does not give a fuck.

He pads to Sirius’s room, Aoife knowing better than to follow him, and sinks onto his bed. He goes here so often that it’s stopped smelling like Sirius and started smelling like him, but that’s alright. He never really knew what Sirius smelled like anyway. 

Harry closes his eyes, burrows under the sheets. Breathes. _Remembers_. 

Sirius, laughing in a photograph, pink-cheeked and glittery-eyed, Sirius, bored and haughtily handsome, a twitch of his wand hoisting Snape up in the air, Sirius, gripping Harry’s shoulders tightly, holding him just _holding_ him and no one’s done that for so so long- 

But he can’t lie, memories don’t, and there’s also Sirius and hours spent alone in the attic, tossing steak to Buckbeak, eyes turned resolutely inward and _look at me just fucking look at me,_ Sirius _look at me_ , there’s also hollow promises so easily broken by Dumbledore’s lies about his relatives, there’s also a mind warped by _twelve fucking years_ in Azkaban without a trial and Harry still hates Dumbledore for that, there’s also _You’re less like James than I thought_ \- even after all these months, that one still stings, _burns_ worse than basilisk venom, crueler than phoenix tears (for how cruel is life?). 

(Sirius had died by _tripping_ into the Veil; how fucking stupid is that, how useless is that death? More useless than his life, but not by much, Harry thinks cruelly. Cruelty, it’s second nature to him these days, it’s been dealt to him so long he knows the game, knows every dash of paint on every card, knows the heft of every dice and each minute chink in the card table, knows every player and their weaknesses; his weakness is all of them and he knows how to play the game, he _knows_ and he’s fucking _good_ at it; it’s only _fair._ ) 

It _hurts_. Sirius was everything, a vision in leather jackets and flying motorbikes but underneath that he was sagging, loose skin flapping under the weight of Harry, absence easier than explanations, expectations; when Harry needed him most, he wasn’t there, and he’d been so fucking _stupid_ to believe Sirius would be; adults never were. _You’re so thin, dearie_ , Molly Weasley chirps whenever he steps into her kitchen, and he knows she sees the bruises and the minute flinching but she just fixes him a steaming plate of food he won’t be able to finish and smiles. _Eat up, dear._

_Eat up._

Meatballs in garlicky sauce, gravlax with dill, French onion soup and fresh strawberry ice cream, peaches and cream- 

And suddenly Harry is lunging over the side of the bed and vomiting, _peaches peaches peaches_ and he can’t- 

And Vernon- 

And, and, he can’t do a fucking thing- 

Except he _can_. He has his wand in his hand and, rasping, gagging, he grabs it, points it, breathes in the smell of sick and says _Evanesco_ and, and, and - 

Like magic, it’s _gone._

Harry hiccoughs in relief, shooting several breath-freshening charms at his mouth, and hisses, his voice cracking, _Aoife, come._ She does, her yellow body slithering over to him and curling around him in loose, heavy, coils, and Harry isn’t sure if he’s sobbing or not. He could be. 

Kreacher appears, too, a cup of hot lemon tea in his gnarled hands and is-that-sympathy-in-his-eyes. Harry’s still pseudo-sobbing and Kreacher looks like he’s considering something, like he’s unsure of whether or not to move. Finally, after swearing Harry to secrecy, Kreacher tells the story of Regulus Black and Slytherin’s Locket and Harry- Harry _stares_. 

If the destruction of a locket was so important to Voldemort, if that was what tethered him to life… _Horcruxes_ , thinks Harry. He’s read about them in The Tale Of Herpo the Foul, and he knows that only basilisk venom or Fiendfyre will do a thing and- _oh_ there’s a cache of basilisk fangs in the Chamber- _oh_. 

The idea of being able to do something real, something definite, is like a punch to the stomach, Harry’s breathless and smiling for once; he raises his wand and intones _Expecto Patronum_ , with hot lemon tea and an _Evanesco_ that works and killing Voldemort on his mind and something blooms from his wand. 

* * *

It’s not a stag. It’s a loping, four-legged, creature, its legs long and heavy-pawed, its face catlike and predatory, a thickly-furred silvery solivagant, the tips of its ears pointed and something about it whispers _dangerous_ , whispers _solitary_ , whispers _Harry_. A lynx. 

And Harry liked Prongs, sure, he liked the connection to his father and its graceful long antlers and elegant thin legs but _this_ Patronus takes his breath away. 

* * *

(Harry’s still fucking broken, empty. The thought of Ron or Hermione makes him feel petrified in the most literal sense of the word, like he’s frozen and blank and utterly immovable. 

He still can’t smell peaches without wanting to claw at his skin and scream _evanesco_ and vomit and maybe, maybe, cry. 

The thought or Sirius makes him feel simultaneously angry and empty- emptier than the norm, that is. 

Dumbledore makes him want to throw things, makes him want to throw a thousand thousand _Crucio_ ’s; so does Vernon. 

Harry knows that once he’s of age and the Trace has been removed, he’s sure as fuck going to pay a visit to dear old Privet Drive, perhaps show them what an unregistered wand and several dozen tomes on Dark magic can do. But. This. This Patronus.)

* * *

A series of letters to Harry James Potter; unopened:  
Harry, my dear boy,  


You must know it pains me to have to ask you such things, when I am sure you’re still grieving our Sirius, but you **cannot** leave Privet Drive, for both your safety and that of your relatives. 

When I arrived on the scene, the house was utterly wrecked, with many a timepiece and framed photograph smashed or otherwise askew, and your Uncle quite distressed at the mess. (Not to worry, dear boy- I put it in order shortly enough, just a few quick spells.) The mess, however, isn’t what we need to worry about- it’s the wards, which protect not only you, but your Cousin Dudley, your Aunt Petunia, and your Uncle Vernon, from harm. You must allow me to escort you home, where I can safely reenact the blood wards and all will be well. 

Now, I understand if you’re embarrassed or angry, but this goes beyond that. I quite empathize, but your safety is key. Your **life** , dear boy. 

Sincerely, 

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Supreme Mugwump and Headmaster of Hogwarts 

Dear boy, 

I must ask you again, quite strongly, to please write back and allow me to escort you home. Are you at Grimmauld Place? We do need it for Order headquarters, I’m afraid. Or is it that rather rude house-elf, Kreacher, who is blocking the wards? Do forgive me, I sometimes tend to think out loud. Now, onto the matter at hand: we need you to return. Britain needs you to remain safe, Harry. 

Think of your family; think of your friends, who are quite worried for you. I believe Ms. Weasley, in particular, told Severus off in a quite spectacular fashion, with a rather magnificent Bat-Bogey Hex. More to the point: if you do not report back, I will be forced to register you as Missing- you have not yet reached the magical age of majority, Harry! Come now, return home! 

Sincerely, 

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Supreme Mugwump and Headmaster of Hogwarts 

Harry, 

Oh, I’m not sure what the Dursley’s did, or what set you off, but now really isn’t a good time! I **know** they’re awful, Harry, I really do, and it definitely isn’t the best place to grieve and I’m so sorry about everything, but you really need to think about your safety! **Not** the time for reckless Gryffindor-ness! (At least you brought your trunk and presumably, your homework, with you, I suppose.) 

But please, Professor Dumbledore is quite worried, and he’s- well, he’s rather scary when he works up to it - prepared to do rather a lot to find you. (I’m keeping an eye on him, don’t worry.) And, yes, we’re all quite worried as well. I’ve been doing tracking spells over and over with the Christmas presents you gave me even though I know they won’t work, because according to Golpapott’s Third Law of Elemental Tracking, the object has to be a personal object or object that would have the specific person's essence in its workings, and I can’t believe I’m disregarding it, but, well… scientific method? Trying what works, I guess. 

I’m really worried for you, Harry. I hope this finds you, somewhere. I was going to track the owl but apparently the Ministry has spells against that, and I’m not confident enough to follow it on a broom. (I’m sure Professor Dumbledore would have someone able doing it, but I’m… well, I thought it only proper for you to come out when you’re ready, although you should be ready **fast** , like tomorrow or the day after that at the latest, or else I’m going to have to murder Fleur Delacour. Yes, she’s here too, and yes, she’s very worried as well. There, take that, you foolish masculine prig, and hustle back over to the Burrow for some blissful cheek-kisses, ~~the stuff of Ronald Weasley’s wet dreams~~ ) 

Well, let’s not discuss that topic any further. 

\- Hermione 

Mate, 

Reckon it’s about time to go back, eh? Dumbledore’s in a right strop, and so’s Mum, although she’s more mad at Mundungus (dunno how she figures it’s his fault, maybe he was slacking off on duty again?) 

\- Ron 

Harry, 

I am mobilizing a force of Aurors to search for you. Dear boy, I know it isn’t the most ideal of situations, but this really could have been avoided if you’d just listened! 

Sincerely, 

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Supreme Mugwump and Headmaster of Hogwarts 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know. Vernon is a fucking _disgusting_ motherfucker and we all need to collectively beat his arse.
> 
> Okay, some people might wonder: _What is it about the rape that set Harry off? I mean, he'd been receiving beatings and lashings for years; he'd even been sexually assaulted by Vernon before, why is this time any different?_
> 
> Well. To those people, I say, first of all: how 'bout you put your mailing address in the comments so I can mail you a nice big basket of _empathy_ , and second of all, think of it this way: Vernon and the rest of the Dursleys have already violated Harry in basically every way possible- the only thing that is really safe is himself (I mean, not really, but you know what I mean- his body and mind was his own). Now, Vernon has crossed that final line- he has put himself _into_ Harry, he has violated Harry's body even _further_ , and it's abso- bloody-fucking-lutely devastating. 
> 
> Yes, this chapter marks the demise of both 'Hogwarts Harry' and 'Summer Harry'. RIP.
> 
> Also! Now they both have snakes and GoSh, I did nOt mean for this to happen, two cutesy Parselmouths with their cutesy snakes argh I just wanted Draco to be super into snakes and Harry to have the line _I want to get a big fucking snake_ and now this is all ~weird~ and like ~twinsies~ so there's _that_. But it's okay, I wrote an epic scene with Harry being a BAMF and yelling at Snape and I am _so ready_ for that chapter I really am.


	4. here, another (child of perpetual loneliness)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harry Potter breathes. In which Harry Potter boards (a train of laughing chattering children, he has not been a child in so so long, adulthood is never more unbearable than in juxtaposition). In which Harry Potter teases (a long-time enemy, two lost children, a runaway and a slip of a prince).
> 
> In which Draco Malfoy shakes (the pain, the bruises. inky and violet, violent, across his ribs. when?). In which Draco Malfoy observes. In which Draco Malfoy _wants_ (a long-time enemy, two lost children, a mystery and a soldier broken before the battle).

_Humans are rather stupid_ , Saorise muses late at night. Draco’s been staying up late, frantically researching a way to remove the bruise, but the thing is he doesn’t know what Voldemort _did_ , he doesn’t _know_ so he doesn’t know how to remove it and if he can’t remove it- 

If he can’t remove it, he’ll have to- 

God, he’ll have to avoid landing himself in the hospital wing the whole entire term, which, given the whole _Hogwarts_ thing and magic and their history of DADA Professors and Quidditch (which, he remembers, he’ll have to quit), is highly statistically improbable, (he’s landed himself in the hospital wing two-point-five times a year, on average) and, just, he can’t afford to be so fucking cautious _and_ accomplish the task Voldemort’s set of him and it’s the year before their NEWTS and he has to study hard, get all O’s and Circe, he’s pretty fucking good but he’s not _that_ fucking good. 

Draco closes his eyes, momentarily. _Are we?_ Draco hisses, and Saorise lets out a rattling, laughing, sound. _Do not even try to deny it, Master. You are depriving yourself of sleep for nothing. Stupid, stupid._

_I didn’t say we weren’t stupid,_ Draco tries, a little weakly, a little pointlessly, and Saorise just shakes her head and slithers onto his shoulders, careful to avoid the bruise. _At least it’s not spreading,_ Draco tries again, even more hopelessly this time, and Saorise lets out an inarticulate noise of frustration. _You are being purposely obtuse, that’s the only explanation. There’s no way you’re actually this stupid. You need sleep. Sleep will help you heal better._

_No- but the Dark Lord_ \- Draco tries, and Saorise cuts him off. _Sleep_. She hisses firmly, and Draco shakes his head, he needs to find some way to subvert this, the Dark Lord is insanely good at magic but nobody is perfect. (Except Draco, he needs to be, he must be, he is a pureblooded Heir to the House of Malfoy, nobody can be more perfect than him he must smile perfectly score perfectly shake hands perfectly bow perfectly kiss hands perfectly dance perfectly flirt perfectly fuck perfectly-) 

He is _exhausted_ \- 

_Sleep._

He does. 

* * *

It’s August 31st and for the first time in years, Harry isn’t looking forward to Hogwarts.

Or, no. That’s a lie- he’s looking forward to Hogwarts, to the castle and the magic and the wonder of it all (it never, ever, gets old) but he isn’t looking forward to seeing Albus _fucking_ Dumbledore and facing Hermione, Ron. Hermione would understand, he thinks- she’s smart like that, she puts together facts and ideas, sliding them together with nary a thought, logic whirring in the cogs of her mind like some infernal engine- but Ron and his family are loyal to Dumbledore to the last. 

But. Hogwarts. 

Harry stuffs various Dark compendiums (glamoured, of course), his robes, his Heir rings (a trip to Gringotts informed him of his Heirships to the Potter and Black Houses), his set of brushes and ritual tools, and his course-books into his trunk. 

The next day dawns summer-bright and early, and Harry Apparates (he’d enlisted Kreacher to teach him Apparition and it’s one of the best decisions he’s ever made- house elves can Apparate _anywhere_ , and Kreacher grins over a mouthful of sharp teeth as he teaches Harry how to become ephemeral, how to breeze past the most ancient and indestructible wards with as much substance as a spring breeze) to King’s Cross. He slides through Platform 9 3/4 easily, and, blanketed with Notice-Me-Not’s, he slides into an empty compartment on the cherry-red Hogwarts Express. 

Well. Mostly empty. Luna’s there, curled up with her copy of the Quibbler (she’s reading it sideways, which Harry finds rather droll), and although the thought of being with the cheerful, beaming, faces of his fellow Gryffindors makes him want to curl up like a slug presented with salt, he finds he doesn’t mind Luna. Here, another child of perpetual loneliness. 

“Hello, Harry,” Luna murmurs after an age, lifting round, silvery-blue, eyes to his face. She tilts her head. “You are no longer Janus, I see.” 

Harry smiles. The expression feels strange on his face, like a grimace. “What?” 

“Janus, the god of two faces. You’ve shed yours.” Luna informs him, smiling. “I’m glad.” 

She looks up. “Might I be able to meet your snake?” 

Aoife’s Shrunken and hidden in Harry’s pocket with a nifty bit of parselmagic, and he has no idea how Luna knows, but, well, it _is_ Luna, after all. 

(Aoife loves her.) 

The rest of the train ride passes in companionable chatter. Luna seems to understand that Harry isn’t really in the mood to talk to Ron or Hermione, and she extends an invitation to sit with him at the Ravenclaw table. 

* * *

Sitting is a pain in the _arse_ , literally. With the whole-torso bruise, there are few position he’s comfortable in, and when Pansy curls up in his lap, he can’t stop his wince. She, of course, immediately demands to see his torso, and he has no choice but to show her.

She’s furious, but there’s not exactly anything she can do. He has Pansy’s soft stroking hands on his scalp, Blaise’s dry wit and quiet comfort. 

“I heard that Potter ran away from home this summer,” Pansy offers randomly, ostensibly as a means to cheer Draco up, and Draco sits up, interest piqued. 

“And where, exactly, did you hear that?” Blaise asks, ever the skeptic. 

Pansy shrugs fluidly, batting her hands to examine her crimson nails. 

“Weasley and Granger were talking about it at the prefect meeting. Which _you_ , incidentally, missed.” Pansy levels her narrow gaze on Draco, and honestly, she’s fucking terrifying. 

Draco coughs. He’d actually forgotten about it, so preoccupied with the delicate vials of poison in his bag, the constant pooling ache under his skin, and the non-magical Dark Mark under his sleeve- 

“You were saying, about Potter?” Blaise intervenes, and Draco shoots him a grateful look. Pansy leans back, pleased as punch to share gossip, as always. 

“Apparently, he left his Muggle relatives and hasn’t responded to any of their letters. They didn’t see him on the Platform, either, although that could just be because of Weasel’s abhorrent observation skills.” 

Blaise is grinning, teeth looking white and disturbingly sharp against the warmth of his skin, and Draco is reminded for the first time in years that this is the son of the woman who’d lured, married, and slayed seven men without a flicker of remorse, without ever being arrested or even detained for questioning. 

“Looks like the little lamb has left the fold,” Blaise croons, something sharp and predatory glittering in the sclera of his eye; when Draco blinks, he sees phosphenes glittering and blooming on the edges of his vision. “Blaise.” Draco grits out, closing his eyes, “Please stop that.” 

Blaise blinks, looking sheepish, and when Draco opens his eyes, his vision has returned to normal again. “Sorry, my magical inheritance came this summer, it’s gotten a bit harder to control.” 

Blaise and his mother are both lilith, which are cousins of the veela, with a powerful, dangerous, allure- not one that controls attraction precisely, but that wreaks havoc on the mind, the senses. Draco supposes he should be grateful for the fact that Blaise stopped it before it got to his other senses. 

Draco nods silently and thinks about Potter, about those green eyes and the thin steely strength of him, of the boy who’d outflown a dragon and fought off the Dark Lord, of the boy who’d stood in front of a monster and refused to bow. 

Talk drifts to different subjects and Draco closes his eyes again, sinking into Pansy’s lap and the soft soothing feeling of her nails against his scalp. 

* * *

They get in the same carriages they always do, and Crabbe and Goyle join them, comfortingly large and bulky. Draco’s never heard either of them say more than a few sentences; he wonders at times if they are even literate. 

There’s a flash of red hair through the window to his right, and Draco turns to see Weasley, Granger, and the girl Weasley struggling to through the mud. A smile curves his lips; he murmurs a quick eavesdropping spell. 

“I don’t understand _why_ he didn’t respond to any of our letters, ‘Mione-” 

“Well, who knows what his cousin did to him? Fred and George said he’s _awful_ -” 

“Yeah, but you don’t know Harry like we do, Gin, he wouldn’t just run away-” 

“He _didn’t_ just run away, Ronald, the house was practically in ruins.” 

“Oi! Whose side are you on?” 

“It’s not about _sides_ -” 

“Maybe he didn’t receive any of our owls?” 

“I don’t think-” 

“I mean, Grimmauld might have an owl ward-” 

“Oi, I’ve got it. That nasty git, Kreacher, might’ve done something- wouldn’t be the first time a house elf blocked Harry’s mail, would it?” 

Drawing back, Draco cancels the spell, thinking. 

* * *

Harry enters the Great Hall practically cloaked in Notice-Me-Not’s, head bent low and glasses stuffed in his pocket (he’s been taking a potion to correct his eyesight).

The din and muffled roar of the tables- it’s _too much_ and he wants to get away, he almost turns back and runs outside, to the cool damp kiss of the rain, but Luna places a gentle hand on his arm and murmurs a spell, and the roar recedes to a reasonable amount. Harry smiles at her, relieved. 

With a hiss, he enlarges Aoife slightly, just enough for her to intimidating but nowhere close to her real length and loops her around his neck where she curls, content and sunny, scarf-like. 

He takes his seat next to Luna at the blue-and-bronze table; no one’s noticed him so far. 

He sees Hermione and Ron whispering furiously at the Gryffindor table and can’t help wincing. He misses them but he- he _can’t_. 

There’s a speech, and the Sorting, and Harry plays a wizarding version of noughts and crosses with Luna, erasing the evidence with a wave of his hand when the plates appear, food-laden and steaming, in front of them. Harry selects a velvety pumpkin soup and digs in. 

He looks up from twirling his spoon in the thick soup, catching the gaze of gray, gray, eyes - and Harry drops the spoon with a soft silvery _clink_ ; startled. 

He hasn’t thought of Malfoy in months; their seething animosity seems childish, superfluous, now, and it’s almost anachronistic to meet his gaze, like he’s been plucked from the grayness and desolation and slipped back into the old easy ways, identifying enemies by the color of their ties, green or red. (Funny, Harry thinks, a smile quirking his lips, _funny_. Voldemort’s eyes are Gryffindor red and his are the color of serpents and slyness; when they meet there is always pain.) 

Except, except, he _hasn’t_ slipped backwards, because although he knows the exact improbability (it’s a tally and sum of every interaction, every sneer every hiss every glare every action and its equal, opposite, reaction, there is most likely a precise number he could put to each side but he won’t) there is no animosity in Malfoy’s gaze; he meets Harry’s wondering eyes evenly. 

Harry tilts his chin, rests it on upturned palms, the picture of innocence. He smiles beatifically at Malfoy, making no attempt to disguise the hollowness in his eyes, and- Merlin - Malfoy _laughs_ , pink lips twisting upwards, gray eyes glinting with genuine amusement. 

There is something he hasn’t felt in months and doesn’t care to identify at the moment running in him, a reckless Gryffindor’s veins; Harry blows Malfoy a kiss. 

Malfoy’s eyes widen. 

Harry drops his gaze, engaging Luna in a conversation about Crumple-Horned Snorckacks and Erumpents. The fire is gone, leaving him feeling vaguely ill. 

(Inside him, though, something shakes awake, loose coils scraping against its stone confines, shedding flurries of sparks like flint against steel. 

* * *

Draco scans the Hall for Potter. He’s not at the Gryffindor table, that’s for sure, and Granger and Weasley are looking agitated.

Draco tilts his head, scanning the room. He passes over the Hufflepuff table fairly quickly, and divots his attention to the Ravens- 

His gaze slides over them all fluidly, like water, but _catches_ at a particular section, sliding thickly as though through honey, his vision blurring dreadfully and he can’t help but _look away_ \- 

Ah. Notice-Me-Not-Charms. 

Draco peers deeper, gaze narrowing, scything through the thick blanket of Notice-Me-Not’s- they only work if one isn’t aware of them, and Draco is quite aware. He’s also quite adept at seeing through them, and a minute is all it takes before he’s sliding under them and _oh_. 

Draco smirks. _Gotcha._

Because there he is, Britain’s Savior, perched demurely at the Ravenclaw table, engaged in a conversation with Luna Lovegood. 

The tilt of his head, the _arch_ of his _spine_ , the way he’s sliding his silver spoon through his soup, slender fingers and parted lips- 

Draco shivers, the tingling heat of arousal sweeping through him. He ignores it. 

Potter’s always been attractive, even in his baggy Muggle clothing and hideous glasses, his hair muffed up and atrocious, his eyes have always been that deathly beautiful green, as unearthly and haunting as an aurora borealis, his skin has always been that warm color, the arch of his cheekbones and the tilt of his eyes have always been that enticing. 

Draco is _used to it_ , used to brushing off the attraction and focusing on the idiotic Gryffindor. 

What he’s _not_ used to, however, is Potter resting his chin on his hands and curving plump lips upwards, green eyes dark and utterly blank, lashes fluttering flirtatiously. 

Draco can’t quite help the laugh that bubbles from him, if only because of the utter implausibility of the situation. 

Potter’s eyes follow the tilt of Draco’s lips, and he lifts slim fingers to his pouting, full, mouth, blowing- blowing Draco a goddamn _kiss_. 

Draco’s robes are feeling rather tight around his groin area- Sweet Circe, he’s _hard_. 

Potter drops his gaze afterwards and doesn’t meet it for the rest of supper no matter how long Draco watches him. 

* * *

Harry loves Hogwarts in all of her forms- in the morning, the fat beams of sunlight struggling through the windows, bleary eyes and rashers of bacon and thickly cut toast; in the afternoon with all the damp mugginess of a hundred or so teenagers and little to no temperature regulation; at dinner with the light cool and dark Ravenclaw blue, but in all honesty, he loves night best.

It’s what Invisibility Cloaks are for, after all- sneaking around. After dinner, Harry slips off, although not before pressing a soft kiss to Luna’s cheek and promising to meet her for breakfast. 

Harry has Aoife coiled sunnily around his neck, under the Cloak, and he’s making for the second-floor girl’s bathroom, and, by extension, the Chamber of Secrets. Hopefully, he’ll avoid the prefects on patrol- 

Harry’s feet clip the loose stone he should have remembered because it’s been there all six years of his Hogwarts education, he hisses _fuck_ , and there’s footsteps and the shining glint of a prefect’s badge and a posh voice drawling _who’s there?_ and Malfoy is standing in front of him, critical laconic gray eyes sweeping the area. 

There’s no way he can avoid being caught, not when it’s quite obvious where he is and the loose stone is literally inches away from his feet, so with a sigh, he sweeps the hood off of his cloak. 

To his credit, Malfoy’s reaction at seeing a disembodied head appear out of normal isn’t anything to scoff at- his eyes widen, but that’s all. 

“I _knew_ I saw your head, that day in Hogsmeade,” is all he chooses to say, and Harry laughs, shortly. It comes out huskier than he means it to, rough and low and loose, and there’s a flush on his cheekbones and really, this could have all happened at a better time, when he’s not easy and relaxed with the heady rush of not a single person recognizing him running through him like particularly fine wine. 

This, the way he lets his shoulders hang loose and lets the tone of his voice do whatever the fuck it wants to, feels like a new kind of freedom, a sprawling kind of Seeking, searching for things to anchor him, tie him down. He isn’t… anyone, anymore, that’s- that’s the point, he’s no one, he has nothing and so he has equal claim to everything, so he can sound like whoever he wants and do whatever he wants because- because Vernon’s _away_ and Kreacher took care of him and- but Dumbledore’s here, isn’t he, Dumbledore will put him _back_ \- 

“You did.” Harry confirms, and Malfoy smiles like he’s delighted but Harry can see the strain in his shoulders, the care in the way he carries himself, like if he makes one wrong move he’ll break, like he is made up of a thousand shards of porcelain haphazardly assembled, and an errant wind is enough to shatter him. 

Harry knows how that feels. He used to feel the same way, like he- or, rather the mask he wore - was close to breaking- on the brink of breaking- broken. Now that it is, what is left is a total absence, a desolated plain, and it’s freeing. He wonders what Malfoy would look like, free. 

Harry realizes they’ve been silent for some time, and clears his throat. “Shouldn’t you be… confiscating something? Taking points?” 

“Should I?” Malfoy says, vaguely, but it’s clear from the flatness of his tone that his heart isn’t in it. Underneath the Cloak, Aoife shifts. 

Harry stares at him, biting his lip. 

He takes Malfoy apart with his eyes, weighing every interaction, splicing every angle, evaluating the long spinning dichotomy between the Malfoy of Now and the Malfoy of Then, adjusting knobs and turning dials as one might turn a rose, with an artist’s delicacy, because the answer to this is important. It could change- things. Certain obscure things, Harry thinks, certain obscure things. He has never had time for poetry but the quote’s lingered with him since he saw it on a Muggle T-Shirt in third year. 

No, Harry decides, he can’t trust Malfoy. Not yet. He doesn’t even trust Ron of _Hermione_ yet for this, God. 

He leans in instead, closer to Malfoy, nostrils flaring as he inhales the spicy, expensive smell that hangs around him. He wants to open his mouth, wants it in his throat, wants to choke on it. He smiles, instead. 

“You’re different this year,” Harry says, quietly, and lets the Cloak slide silkily from his shoulders, exposing a drowsy Aoife. Malfoy’s eyes widen. 

“Am I? You’re _exactly_ the same,” Malfoy says, softly, lips quirking at the corners, and Harry can’t help the laugh that slips from his lips. His breath ghosts over Malfoy’s lips, and they part, pink and glossy and _fuck_ , there’s a shiver of _something_ warming Harry’s chest, making him want to run a finger on the glassy edge of Malfoy’s inner lip. 

“Well, prefect? You have me at your mercy now,” Harry says, smirking slightly, and they can both tell he doesn’t really mean it but Malfoy snickers anyway, drawing in on himself and tipping Harry a half-smile. 

“I’ll turn a blind eye. Run along, little lion.” Malfoy says, and there’s something about his words that make Harry shudder with something he can’t name. 

_Are you going to mate anytime soon?_ Aoife hisses, bored, from his neck, and Harry laughs, cheeks flushing. He thinks he hears Malfoy snort but when he looks up, eyes narrowed, Malfoy’s face is blank as anything. 

And that makes _sense_ , because there’s no way Malfoy is a Parselmouth, but Harry can’t escape the feeling that he’s missed something. He wants to ask- 

He pulls his Cloak over his head instead, and is gone in a whisper of sound. 

* * *

Draco breathes. He- he breathes. The bruise feels like it’s constricting sometimes and he can’t- Bruise-Healing paste, even at ten times the strength (courtesy of Severus) only fades it a tiny bit. (He counts it as a win and vows to apply it every night, because a little bit is still something, but. Still.)

He’s too _tired_ for thoughts of this, but there’s Potter in his mind, leaning carelessly towards him, a sunny (snarky, too) snake sprawled on his shoulders and a smirk curving his lips, looking like he wants to swallow Draco _whole_. He could ruin me, Draco thinks. Maybe I want him to, he allows. 

He’s aching in the darkness of his dorm bed, Silencing and protection charms up at full blast, and he’s hard as _fuck_. Potter’s smile. His fucking _eyes_. His words- _You’re different this year._ he’d said. _Well, prefect? You have me at your mercy now._

Draco exhales, shakily, a hand trailing down to the tie of his pyjamas. He slips a hand around his aching cock and groans in relief. 

He thumbs the head of his cock, hissing in pleasure, and fists himself slowly, working from the root to the sensitive tip, over and over and over. 

_You’re different this year_ \- Draco squeezes tighter, a hand playing with his nipples. _Potter._

_Well, prefect? You have me at your mercy now_ \- He’s half-arched up the bed now, hips canting up as he fucks into his hand over and over, eyes slitting shut helplessly. A film reel of images- Potter by the lake, Gryffindor tie slung casually around his neck, the collar of his shirt undone and hanging loose, collarbones golden and arching in the sunlight; Potter diving for the Snitch, hair wind-slaked to his scalp, robes slick against his skin with rain; Potter under the Hogsmeade sunlight, smile warm and easy and open, an arm slung around a friend’s shoulders. 

“ _Potter_ -” Draco gasps, and maybe he hates himself but maybe he doesn’t because he wants this so _much_ \- 

Potter at the Great Hall, smiling slowly, all thick black lashes, green eyes and insolence- 

Potter lifting a hand to full, red, lips and blowing him a _kiss_ , plump lips parted ever so sli- 

“ _Fuck,_ ” Draco hisses, eyes closed, and comes with Potter’s name on his lips. 

* * *

  
Harry meanders off- he’d meant to show Aoife the Chamber, but that’s rather ruined now, so he slips into Gryffindor Tower. Ron and Hermione are curled in the common room, talking in low voices, but they look up as he- clothed in the Cloak but they fucking know it’s him, of course they do - walks in.  


“ _Harry_.” Hermione gasps, and then she’s darting across the room and reaching blindly, hands fisting in empty air, trying to drag off the Cloak. Against his will, he feels a tired smile curl his lips, an empty sigh whooshing from him and she tracks the noise like a hound, head cocked and eyes narrowed, yanking the Cloak off of him. It absconds in a billow of furling silver, and he is at once alive and not, head spinning as he desperately tries to reconcile the friendly open faces he knows with the angry narrowed eyes of Hermione, a potent simmering brown, and the bright blue of Ron. There’s something to say, something they’ll expect him to say- but there’s nothing he _can_ say. 

Harry opens his mouth- 

_just a little more, open that’s right yes yes yes open and no teeth, no teeth good boy good boy suck-_

Closes it, he feels sick suddenly. “Hi,” Harry says, weakly, balling the crumpled thinness of the Cloak in his pocket. He can’t say anything- they want him to say something, but what can he say? What can he- 

“Oh, _Harry_ ,” Hermione says, despairingly, and suddenly it’s like they’ve forgotten him, like they’ve forgot he left at all, like they’re going to pull him precisely into the mothering red-gold filaments of the Gryffindor nest, and it _terrifies_ him because he is something- he is - 

He is bereft, he is thestral-colored inside, he is laconic and marmoreal and something he cannot define but is perhaps the exact shade of nothingness, he is not anything close to the Harry James Potter they think they know. 

“I- I’m sorry,” Harry rasps out after an age, looking everywhere but their eyes, concentrating on the freckle adjoining the hinge of Ron’s jaw, he can’t look at glittering blue or brown, so fucking familiar and strange and at once the dichotomy pains him. 

“Harry,” Hermione says, eyes enormous, “Is that a snake?” 

“I- yeah,” Harry says weakly, shaking slightly because he can’t do this, he can’t make awkward small talk and pretend like all three of them don’t see everything that has gone wrong (they don’t know what has gone wrong but they know it has, they must, or Hermione at least, Ron has never been one to see the nebula). 

He clears his throat. “Her name’s Aoife. She’s- she’s mine, I got her this summer.” 

_Who are these humans?_ Aoife hisses suddenly, and Hermione and Ron recoil. _They smell of fear-things but they are making you smell of fear-things, too. It doesn’t make sense. I can bite them,_ Aoife adds, hopeful to the last, and Harry snorts again. 

_That’s alright. They don’t want to hurt me._ Harry hisses at her, and the sound of Parseltongue from his lips, his lips which he has sealed so far when it comes to his Gryffindor compatriots, seems to unnerve Ron and Hermione; as he thought, really. As he thought. 

_Then why are you smelling of fear?_ Aoife hisses reasonably, and Harry feels like his throat is closing up. He clears it. _I- the friend I was with them was different from the person I am. I don’t think we fit anymore._

Aoife ripples sicilian and serpentine ‘round his neck, spilling from his throat and curling sinuously around his waist. _Then leave,_ Aoife hisses, sounding bored. _If you don’t want to live with your nest-mates, leave the nest._

And that’s- it’s so fucking simple that he can’t help the slightly crazed laugh that spills from his lips. “Sorry,” Harry gasps out, and then he’s swinging his Cloak gloriously up, gloriously free, over the narrow bracket of his shoulders, flipping the hood up over his head and darting up the stairs, Silencing his footsteps and Shrinking his trunk and running, out of Gryffindor Tower, running, running, running. 

* * *

The Potter boy is- something is different. He’d heard about the runaway and scoffed, because it was just like the boy to forget about the Order, about duty and responsibility and care and simply run off, leaving the house in ravaged shreds around the fat pulp of his Uncle. Just like Black, too, really, maybe fleeing is part and parcel of that particular bloodline. (He is not one for pureblood genealogies but he knows this: Dorea Black married a Potter. Potter has Black blood in his veins.)

Or at least, he expected to. 

What he feels is different, it’s- 

Lily, he thinks. _Lily_ , too- flame-colored hair that floated flame-like upwards, as if color and light weren’t enough for the quivering energy contained within the prism of her glowing skin, as if action, motion were necessary, utterly so. Jazzy and white-toothed, the peach-colored nib of her earlobe, the pliant cleft of her lower lip, the ferocity of her green green eyes, the color of death and life in equal measure. 

Some of that was for him once, the piceous, piteous, boy with all the blackness of a crow, some of that light and unbearable veracity was for him, a small shard of glowing light imparted holier than the rest. 

Lily running, Lily floating, Lily flying, Lily falling. (She never did, he remembers. Never did, never fell, an flighted creature to the last until that fateful Samhain night with autumn in the wintry curve of her cheek and spirits in the aching blankness of her jewel-colored eyes. No, he remembers thinking. But I, but I, but you were supposed to be _safe_.) 

He looks at the unyielding shadows of Harry Potter’s green eyes and he sees another life, another pair of green eyes that fought and raged and beamed and flew- 

Runaway, he thinks, Lily were you ever did you ever- 

Yes, he knows. She used to seek him out. When the cloying embrace of suburbia was too much for her, when she’d had enough of the narrowed eyes and cat-like hisses of her bony sister, she used to knock at his door and together they would escape like two lost children, two runaways, sheltering in the dwelling green glow of glen and fen and woodland, skipping stones and wishing on clouds because the stars were fogged by the thick smog of humanity’s exhaust. 

(Exhaust, he thinks. He’s exhausted. He’s never liked children. He loathes them, actually; in every one of their cocksure smirks he sees James Potter and Sirius Black, in every one of their idolizing gazes he sees Peter Pettigrew, in every one of their stuttering cowardliness he sees Remus Lupin and the yellow seething eyes at the end of the tunnel, roaring for blood denied and fought for, in every radiant beam he sees Lily Evans, before she was polluted by the besotted cloying arrogance of Potter, and it is exhausting. He has had enough of his past, had enough of remembrances, had enough of figurines that moved in predetermined pathways across the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, had enough. His life is a tragedy in its emptiness. There is nothing here to give light, has never been for over two decades, and he looks at his students with the cold pitiless eyes of a crow and carves his mark on them with his hooked nose and yellow-stained fingers and uncaring brilliance.) 

Harry Potter sits at Ravenclaw table, cloaked in enough Notice-Me-Nots to hide the Ministry and eats warily, like every bite of food is too much for his pink, soft, mouth. Lily had those lips, Severus thinks. Lily had those- and she - and I - what did I - 

Harry Potter nests unnoticed in the blue-and-bronze hangings, blowing an insouciant kiss to a long-time enemy who is so burdened it is a shock he has not been crushed yet. Long-time enemy, Severus thinks, and the connections are slow to form but when they _do_ he thinks starkly, astonishingly, of James Potter and Lily Evans and hatred and hexes and a blossoming, billowing, romance. 

Draco Malfoy is his godson and look at the Unbreakable Vow that strings tight around his throat, tight enough to cut deep and far and fast. Look at this, look at what we have wrought, look at this beauty that is doomed before it has begun. Complications, endurances. Severus will endure, he will find a way. 

Draco Malfoy is not James Potter and neither is Harry; none of them are vibrant enough to play the dazzling glow of Lily Evans, even for a moment, but he can see the vague outlines and similarities and he feels a crushing, desolating, sense of despair, because this cannot be all that there is, doomed overwritten love sagas that play out across the years and kill and strangle and choke and burn out in a flood of brilliance (and take Severus with them. When Lily Evans Potter fell, he fell with her. If Draco Malfoy fails and dies, the Unbreakable Vow will take Severus with him. That is his part, the terribly willing tagalong, and he plays it the only way he knows how- scornfully). 

Oh, Severus thinks, what have we done to you, this bright unshakable offspring, maybe we have quenched your glow and maybe you could have been a Lily. (An Evans.) 

Oh, Severus thinks when he catches glimpse of the unshakable, indomitable, violescence of those clear green eyes, oh, but I thought I ruined you. 

* * *

The light is damp and cool and barely there when he pops into existence. A batty thing, the disgraced filthy Black called him once, many times, a barmy elf, mad-as-a-hatter- Kreacher doesn’t know why a hatter would be mad.

Kreacher doesn’t know a lot of things, but he knows the Ancient and Noble House of Black. 

It is in Kreacher’s bird-like bones and his green-ink blood, the walls and breathing portraits inhale when Kreacher sucks in a breath, exhale when Kreacher’s heart beats a rapid tattoo against his wrinkled thin skin. 

They don’t understand but they will when they die, Kreacher’s beloved Masters and Mistresses. Kreacher is their sole caretaker, Kreacher tends to them with all the care in his broken withered labyrinth of a heart. 

Now he has the filthy half-blood son of a Potter and a Mudblood as his Master and Kreacher knows that Mistress would surely not approve and yet if this is the _last_ remnant of the Black line- for Missy Andromeda was naughty, yes, and is never coming home, that is true - than he must obey. More- Kreacher must _serve_ , as house-elves do. 

And now, Kreacher knows he is right. Master Harry, with his viridian eyes and messy Potter hair, has been Black all along. He watches Master Harry devour books on Dark Magic, Darker and Darker and Darkest, venturing further and further into the Blackest corners of the Black library. He watches Master Harry practice curses so foul that Mistress Walburga would cry in happiness, watches the portraits appraise Master Harry with prying laconic eyes. 

They evaluate him, all of the inhabitants of Grimmauld. 

The portraits, the living-breathing-beating Black treasures, and when Master Harry reconnects them in a way not even Kreacher can, in a way that only a Black can, absentmindedly correcting the flow of energy and repairing the terrible, gaping, damage that the filthy disgrace and that mongrel Mundungus Fletcher have wrought on this Ancient and Novel House, Kreacher- and the portraits lining the walls, the heads of his ancestors plaqued on the lily-gilded embossed wallpaper - knows that Master Harry is truly a Black, truly the Lord of their Most Ancient And Noble House. 

But. Those filthy _Muggles_ dared _touch_ him. That filthy, disgusting, scum, put himself inside Master Harry. Kreacher cannot fathom the disgusting crime of it, it is so boggling. The portraits, the heads, the walls, and Kreacher, they are all in agreement. This Muggle scum must burn. 

The walls and locks and wards made of blood and love are nothing to Kreacher, they are as ephemeral as a wisp of peach-scented breeze on a summer’s day. Kreacher ghosts past them with the ease of the long-departed and smiles with the vicious light of mad things. (The disgraced son was not entirely wrong about some things, if not others.) 

The fat lump of Muggle scum is sitting on an equally lumpy couch of little to no taste (what can you expect, Kreacher, Walburga purrs low and sweet in his skull, they’re Muggles, after all). 

Kreacher smiles at him, lips skinning over sharp, grimy, teeth. The Muggle screams and blathers about freakish things and Kreacher wastes no time. 

It has been a long time since blood was whetted, and Kreacher finds himself- 

Thirsty. 

Aching, almost, with the need to avenge his Master. 

Master Harry will be good for the Blacks, the Potter blood will freshen and hopefully curb some of the Black madness, the Dark Magic will be good for the world, and things will prosper and _this_ Muggle scum needs to be in _pain._

(Kreacher Silences the area around them. He will save the screams for later, perhaps keep them in a vial of a sort and gift them to his Master for Yule.) 

He begins. 

(Kreacher is a Black house-elf. He has known since his conception how to cause pain. Intimacy, exquisiteness. The lovely sound of shredded vocal cords, rending flesh. The cool silver gleam of a knife, turning the cloying embrace of pale skin inside-out, exposing the capricious labyrinth of blood-work and veins.) 

(When he is finished, he has been working for a dutiful hour, grin manic and teeth sheathed in blood. He retracts the wicked claws he has grown, the sharpness of his teeth, cools the anger that is sated, barely. The Muggle scum is a bleeding shredded mess of clarified fat on the rugged carpet. Kreacher takes his leave.) 

Anything, Kreacher thinks, anything, to serve the House of Black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My next update will not be for a couple of months. Why? Well, because, quite frankly, the way I write things- I write chapters and post them directly after i have finished, which is most likely fueled by the temptation of instant gratification (aka me being a comments/kudos whore ;) - is just not feasible. It isn’t sustainable. Therefore, I’m looking to create what is called a “buffer”, meaning I’ll have several chapters already written and therefore will be able to post more regularly and confidently. Which means, unfortunately, your next update won’t be for a long time. _Je suis desoleé._
> 
> Also, as you may have noticed. I changed the title- it was a bit of a mouthful and I’m a sucker for lowercase letters...
> 
> P.S. So, this fic started out as a "Draco-Centric" fic, featuring Draco and only Draco as the main star, but I soon realized that with Harry, we have a framework of events and shit, what with the Slug Club and Dumbledore's lessons and Quidditch and the H-BP and with Draco, it'd basically just be: "Draco.... still hasn't finished his tasks yet. He's delaying! Delaying! Delaying! Because he doesn't want to let a bunch of homicidal maniacs run loose in a castle full of children!" Which is... boring. So, it's now more Harry-centric. Sorry!


	5. we are unfashioned creatures (but half made up)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The unfamiliarity of memory, remembrances of people lost. An offer, a smile, and a damn fine arse.

Harry sprints to the Room of Requirement, thinking- well, he doesn’t remember, what he thinks; some panting exclamation of need, and then there’s a door, the round doss of a knob and the gleaming paint and there’s something about it that screams _home_. Harry twists the knob, almost savagely, thinking _don’t let anyone in, let no one in but me_ and runs in.

He… well. Harry can’t do much else but stare, really. The walls are wallpapered in soft minty greens and blues, the bookshelves stocked with several out-of-print Dark texts, a fully equipped terrarium for Aoife, and there’s a huge bed hung with filmy white netting (the thick velvet draperies close him in, remind him of the cupboard and fear and culpability) and a blood magic setup and several different rooms and it’s- well, it’s everything he could have dreamed of for a house of his own. A house of his own- the thought is laughable, unattainable, a miracle of untouched optimism. 

He can imagine it, suddenly- somewhere where he doesn’t have to _hide_ , high-walled and smooth-floored, the thresholds bound in blood and sacrifice and runic arrays, the windows fresh and clear-paned, framed by dwindling azalea in blossoming violescence. Dobby, maybe, would be there, all thin green-gray skin and enormous eyes, and Aoife, sunny and sleek; Kreacher with his scowling approval and- and - 

Harry lets out a shuddering breath, the Cloak swallowing the last of his silvered protests. There’s a hypnagogic sprawl to the lesions of his thoughts. He’s barely leapt onto the bed before he’s fast asleep. 

* * *

Harry wakes the next day in sleep-creased robes, his hair a wild mess, his tongue thick and tender. His head feels strange, thin-scalped, as if at any moment the hard bone of his skull will succumb with barely a sigh, exposing the soft mollusk of Harry’s brain to cruel knives and malice. He thinks, momentarily, of Draco, all hollowed (hallowed) cheeks and eyes that glint a weary, glowing, gray, but it’s a flicker of a thought, a slip of an instant. Gone.

He can’t- it’s like he doesn’t know how to _move_. 

_Master_ , Aoife hisses, scales undulating in the low light like it’s just that easy, like it’s just that simple, like to move is to move is to breathe is to just _be_ and he can’t- 

Harry sinks back, a _Tempus_ projecting the time in front of him. He’s not late, but he’ll miss breakfast if he lingers for too long. 

Good, Harry thinks blankly, good. He doesn’t know if he can eat, anyway. 

He dresses discreetly, in sparing, quick movements. He Shrinks Aoife and slips her in the pocket of his robes, layered with a Warming Charm or two. 

He makes his way to Defense just in time- and oh, fuck. Snape’s there, the tip of his nose and the slick oil-shine of his hair. The sear of his black, black, eyes. Those eyes loved my mother once, Harry thinks numbly, feeling pinned to the wall with accusation. 

_Why did you run why did you run what did you you aren’t your mother’s father’s son, you ~~ran~~ _ and then it’s over and Harry’s shaken and hollow and slinking to the back of the classroom, his cloak of Notice-Me-Not’s settling over him like driftwood. It doesn’t have to make sense, he thinks. Just- 

“The Dark Arts,” Snape begins, his voice sharp and swarthy and alive in a way Harry’s never heard before- 

And then there’s a waifish second-year, the door swinging open to admit her with a quiet _snick_. Snape’s features tighten, his fists curling up (Harry can almost see it in the thin shallows of his face, the _are you going to ruin this too_ born of years of bullying) and then he’s rounding on the second year, growling a terse _what?_

She swallows. 

“Professor McGonagall would like to see Harry Po-” 

“ _Potter_ ,” Snape snarls like a curse, black eyes swinging wildly, livid and ox-like and ever so slightly bloodshot. Harry rises, slowly. He feels weak with relief. McGonagall is safe, he thinks. She’s with the Order, but still. There’s something in her shrewd eyes that makes him feel safe. 

Snape is snarling something about detention at 8 tonight to make up for what he’ll miss and there’s Vernon in the hateful gyre of his fists, Petunia in the spitefully spat insults and Harry is fleeing, fleeing, fleeing, his tie loose around his neck and his schoolbag clenched so tight in his whitening fist it _aches_. 

* * *

“My OWLS?” Harry repeats, dumbly. The OWLS have completed slipped his mind. It’s hard, sometimes, to get into the schoolwork and tests and the warm fug of Hogwarts after a summer of hurt and fists and fight-or-flight. He’d just picked up the things that the other students had picked up, he hadn’t even _thought_ about why he hadn’t gotten his book list, must’ve been the owl wards Kreacher put up-

“Yes, Potter, your OWLS.” McGonagall repeats, impatient but not unkind. A strand of hair, graying, slips from her tight bun. She slides a sheet of paper over to him. 

He’d done about as well as expected- better, even. He hadn’t been trying, really, so it’s not like the scores mean something, spell out some great existential truth like they do for Hermione, but when he sees the bright _OO_ score for DADA, something inside of him sparks to life. 

An O for Transfig and Care, E’s for Potions and Herbology… he’d failed Divination, obviously, and Astronomy was a bust, given the business with Hagrid… 

“Professor,” Harry says, suddenly, “D’you think I might be able to take Ancient Runes instead of Divination?” 

His resolve wilts under her shrewd, disbelieving, eyes. “Ancient Runes,” McGonagall repeats, slowly, “Which you have never shown any interest in, three years late- I suppose you might be able to take it with the third years if you like, Potter-” 

“Could I take an evaluation?” Harry asks, a tad desperate, and McGonagall, looking supremely wary, acquiesces, withdrawing a monumental quantity of paperwork and sliding a few sheaves of Ancient Runes work over the slick surface of her desk with the point of a handsome eagle-feather quill. 

“Go on, then.” McGonagall sighs. “See me after Professor Babbling evaluates your Ancient Runes work, I’ll write you a pass for Professor Snape- in the meantime, I’ll put you in for a free period around that time- I suppose you’ll be taking Transfiguration, Herbology, Defense, and Potions?” 

“Potions? Didn’t Professor Snape say he wouldn’t accept students who hadn’t gotten an O-” 

“Professor Slughorn,” McGonagall says, and _oh_ , right, Snape teaches Defense now, “Is happy to accept E’s.” With a flick of her wand, there’s a fresh copy of his schedule sliding across the table to him. 

“Right.” Harry says, for lack of anything else to say, and then McGonagall sighs, long and rough, her Scottish brogue thickening in preparation for what she’s about to say and Harry knows it’s going to be about the summer, and his whereabouts, and the goddamn Order and he can’t- 

“Bye, Professor!” Harry cries, hasty and shaking and he’s gone, whipping past the door and breaking into a sprint. His foot clips something skidding and damp on the cobblestones and he barely catch himself before he trips. It’s a copy of the Daily Prophet, fresh from breakfast, the ink slightly damp on the cold wet stones. 

Harry bends, picks it up. DEATH EATER CAPTURED, the brash lettering claims, and Harry feels a spurt of deadened, flaring, hope. He scans the rest of the article quickly, heart falling when he realizes it’s _Stan Shunpike_ , that bemused boy who puberty did irreparable harm to with his acne-pocked face and heavy accent and general air of harmlessness. Stan Shunpike is not a Death Eater, Harry knows this for certain. 

It sends a sweeping flood of desolation over him because hasn’t this happened before, innocent men in Azkaban, the Ministry’s creeping fug of riddled corruption and plump greedy hands grasping for public approval? He feels a spurt of desperate longing for the Muggle world with its checks and balances and judicial votes and multitudes of different newspapers that aren’t bought out by the government. Due process, Harry thinks, the rights of criminals and maybe he needs to bring this issue up with Hermione because _really_ \- 

Hermione. His mind flits to the last time he saw her, face damp and terribly, horribly, confused, her hair making an explosively bushy aureole around her face. He can’t even begin to articulate why he’s avoiding her, only that this farce of normality is suddenly desperately important for him to keep up, and he knows that if he spends even more than five minutes in her presence, her or Ron both, he will spill his secrets in gasping confessional and she will see the emptiness in him where once dwelt the light of passion, Gryffindor-gold and bright as a star. 

“Mr. _Potter_!” He hears behind him, and when he turns, Ancient Runes-work clutched crumple-tight in his whitening fist, Professor McGonagall is hurrying towards him, her robes streaming out behind her and eyes narrowed disapprovingly. “I have something for you, Mr. Potter, given that you apparently were unable to receive any owls this summer.” 

Harry swallows, here it is. 

McGonagall slips a hand in her robes and in her hand is a glinting red-and-gold trinket, he can’t quite see it in the mellow brightness of the September sunlight. She presents it to him, arched placidly over the dry caldera of her palm like some sort of bastion. _Quidditch Captain_ , the badge reads, winking like a blessing, and Harry feel something dry and tight arch up in the canal of his throat, preventing him from speaking. 

“Well, Mr. Potter?” Professor McGonagall says, impatient, and Harry reaches out a hand that he’d like to pretend is not trembling as it undeniably is, and snatches it up, quick as a mouse. “Thank you,” Harry breathes out, grateful because he can only imagine how irritated she must have been when he’d run away like a bloody coward and secluded himself- 

McGonagall smiles, a rare occasion made all the rarer by the fond shine to her eyes- which are, Harry realizes, a very pale shade of blue, colored with startling complexity, like the grains of a star. “Well, Mr. Potter. I daresay you’re the best student for the job.” 

Harry smiles, weakly, something urging him to reciprocity. “Thanks, Professor.” 

He expects her to leave, but she stays, something in the mournful crimp to her lips speaking of lingering regrets. “Your father, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall says, softly, and Harry’s head jerks up, “Was Quidditch Captain as well.” 

And it’s something he’s already known and God help him, sometimes he hates the way people drop tidbits of information in front of him, casual as you please, like droplets of water to man who hasn’t had a drink in years, like crumbs to a salivating dog, _just enough_ to keep him going, thin-ribbed and starved but nevertheless upright. But. Something in the benevolent quirk to her brows soothes him. 

Harry swallows, dry. Should he say something? Maybe- 

“And,” Professor McGonagall continues, “I have every confidence that you will do his memory great honor by carrying on his mantle.” 

Harry opens his mouth. Closes it. There’s something for him to say, isn’t there, bright and perfect and just out of his reach, something that will make him sound exactly a proud son to his Gryffindor-to-the-utmost-maximum father, bright and messy-haired and beloved by three-quarters of the school. He can’t think of anything. Maybe he isn’t supposed to. 

Professor McGonagall looks at him a moment longer, those sharp eyes ticking all over what feels like the various planes of his existence, and then is off in a whirl of sensible robes, a tartan scarf, and the faint powdery scent of violet water. 

He watches her until his glasses fog over. 

* * *

Draco watches as Potter stumbles into the Defense Against The Dark Arts (ha, he’s been training in the Dark Arts all summer) classroom, hair a perpetual mess that is truly, utterly, astonishing in the degree of its explosive messiness, robes slightly askew, and tie knotted loose around the golden hollow of his throat. Something hollows him. Draco can feel a similar feeling in the knot of his stomach, in the bruise that has begun to ache again (the Numbing Potions are wearing off). 

Severus is staring at Potter, those eyes which have only been directed to Draco with irritation at the most, are glaring at Potter as if by the sheer force of his hatred, he can excise Potter from this plane of existence. Potter looks trapped, his right hand curling into a delicate fist, thumb running feverishly over the dry skin of his index finger. 

And then Severus is whirling in a billow of robes- Draco learned his sense of dramatics from his godfather, although Severus’s style is more icily composed Victorian recluse while Draco’s is haughty 16th century noble - and Potter is sagging into a rickety seat- on the _Slytherin_ side, really, is he that oblivious? 

Stop thinking about Potter, Draco tells himself, settling in anticipation for the no doubt sure to be poetic and brilliant speech that Severus is about to perform. He gets as far as two words before a stuttering second-year opens the door- Draco feels a pang of sympathy for his godfather, whose speech was just _interrupted_ \- and calls for Potter. 

Looking terribly relieved, Potter all but sprints for the door, hurtling past the wan-faced girl and for the shrewd-eyed cloister of the McGonagall’s office. 

Well, Draco tells himself, at least now it will be easier to not think about him. 

(This does not prove to be true.) 

* * *

Draco lingers after the bell rings, watching Severus. He can’t tell Severus about his- his _tasks_ , so banal and benevolent a word for the grotesque items he must tick off on his to-do list: murder, child-endangerment, breaking and entering… _tasks_ , such a menial way to phrase it, like he’s running an errand or something similar, popping off to Diagon to pick up a Pepper-Up for Lord Voldemort-

Hysteria hitches Draco’s throat with giggles, and he swallows it down, manfully. He’s been in a rare happy mood all morning (he resolutely does not think about Potter and his green fucking eyes and _last night_ ) and though he knows it’s as doomed to die as surely as an Augury’s caw, he can’t help but cling to it. 

“Draco.” Severus sighs, sounding so old and so, so, weary. Draco cannot help but think of when he was little and clinging to his godfather’s robes, looking up at him with adoring gray (Black) eyes, lisping _Sevvy, Sevvy, I wuv you._. 

“Excellent lesson, sir.” Draco says, smiling cheerfully. Severus’s scowl becomes, if possible, even more pronounced. 

“The eloquence of your speech, not to exaggerate- nay, as if a thing was possible - was staggering in its ferocity. I do believe that Messers Finnegan and Thomas were so overcome by it that they drifted into awed unconsciousness.” 

Draco watches as the right side of Sev’s mouth drifts up in unwilling amusement. He slams it down as soon as he sees Draco’s grin, scowling. 

Severus. Severus will never change, Draco knows, and Severus loves him with every ounce of love he is capable of, which is not a terribly large amount. Most of it is so bound up in grief and denial and terrible, terrible, hatred, so deep it rocks the very core of him and hardens the shell of him until to outsiders he is a bitter, spiteful, man. 

Draco has been given a terrible task- tasks - and his entire torso has been cursed and his schedule has been thoroughly avulsed of everything that made it worthwhile in the first place, but he is goddamn happy and going to stay that way, at least for a few hours. 

* * *

Harry completes the Ancient Runes worksheet easily- there’s a few he doesn’t recognize, because he’s learnt the Dark and intensely practical runes for his blood-work and the nuances of practitioner and student do not always collimate successfully, but he’s fairly certain that he’ll be accepted into at least the fifth year class- actually, he hopes he will, because Luna will be there and Hermione won’t be.

He dawdles awkwardly outside the outskirts of the Ancient Runes classroom, waiting for the bell. 

While he is, he contemplates the problem that is avoiding his two very best friends, who constitute basically his entire social circle. 

Not to mention the fact that he basically lives with them nine months out of twelve. 

Not to _mention_ that they are all three of them major juvenile participants in one of the most important military/political endeavors in the last century (excluding Grindewald, that is) and when he isn’t at Hogwarts or Privet Drive he’s at Grimmauld, where, undeniably, they will dwell as well. 

(That strikes him as funny, actually. Because- _because_ he’s only been to about three places in his life- five, if you count Diagon and Hogsmeade, although Hogsmeade is debatably under the purview of Hogwarts, and six if you count the graveyard, which Harry doesn’t.) 

When I graduate, Harry tells himself, I will embark on an enormously, embarrassingly, long trip spanning the entirety of the magical world. 

Bit like Voldemort, really, or Tom Riddle. 

Harry wonders when Voldemort stopped being Tom. When he, teetering on the knife-edged brink of humanity, had jerked in one last desperate paroxysm and plummeted unerringly for the deepest cesspits. When Tom Riddle started looking an awful lot like a ghost and Voldemort had been the only name that comes to mind for the luridly pale, scarlet-eyed, apparition that looks more like a monster of legend than the ‘greatest wizard who ever lived’. 

Harry knows that Dumbledore has and always will call him ‘Tom’, which he supposes Dumbledore thinks is some brave and noble attempt to remind the man of the humanity which he had blatantly and remorselessly discarded. 

It seems petty to him, stupid and silly. 

After all, Dumbledore only ever calls him ‘Tom’ to his face, and that seems akin to poking a rabid dog- dangerous and illogical. To Harry and his friends it is always ‘Voldemort’ or ‘the threat of Voldemort’ or ‘the unimaginable danger of Voldemort’. He only ever calls Voldemort by a dead man’s name to provoke him, perhaps to cite a closeness that existed, if ever, only in the realms of fantasy. 

Harry knows better than he can articulate, better than Dumbledore could imagine, what it is like to be called by a name that no longer applies to you, that was given to you in a terrible place and used by people you despise. His body still jumps whenever he hears the word ‘freak’, sometimes when he hears the word ‘boy’. 

He knows Voldemort lived in an orphanage, once, in the middle of World War II and he knows, too, the peculiar kinship between them. 

He remembers how life feels when you have nothing to live for, when you are eking out an existence solitarily simply for the sake and knowledge that you will someday rise high, higher, highest. 

When you live a miserable childhood, you separate, perhaps subconsciously, your existence into ‘life’ and ‘not-life’. Harry does not count the Dursley’s as his life. They did nothing for him, he learned nothing, he accomplished nothing, he felt nothing. (Feels nothing.) A miserable existence spent in misery, an ever-extinguishing equation of dull discontent. 

His life, before Hogwarts, was lived in brief, illusory, moments- the flicker of a firefly, the comforting weight of the library and brief stories of wizards and knights and dragons, those rare moments when he was alone in the house and he could finally _breathe_. 

He imagines Tom Riddle’s life before Hogwarts- he could have easily been that boy - that brilliant, sociopathic, boy with a penchant for cruelty and a untenable force of will. 

Fantasies, phantasms of grandeur, the weight of water against his skin, birdcall scatting bright in a shower of autumn leaves, the damp moss-shine of a cave uncovered and the feeling of magic bulging in his veins- 

More than imagines, he feels, he _knows_ \- 

_”Such a brilliant boy,” they say, “but so cold.” He’s never been adopted, despite being summarily more attractive and intelligent than all of the other orphanage brats put together. He’s not sure if it’s to do with him or the orphanage matron, although he supposes she would be glad to be rid of him, so it’s most likely him._

_Occam’s Razor- the simplest solution, no need to add endless variables._

_He is meant for greater things, and this is what he tells himself day after endless, dreary, day. Someday, he will crush people’s skulls beneath his feet and people will call it benediction._

_Mrs. Cole would be glad if someone killed him, Tom thinks suddenly. He thinks of something he read once- “stripped of every right by virtue of the fact that anyone can kill him without committing homicide; he can save himself only in perpetual flight.”_

God, Harry thinks, pulse fluttering weakly, hands scrabbling at the walls for purchase, mind shuddering under the weight of such unasked-for knowledge- 

_Perpetual flight, Tom thinks, and he rises approximately six inches off of the floor, hovering sedately. His face is composed and his features steady, in abrupt contrast to the feverishly excited feeling in his chest. He can fly. He can **fly**._

_I am special, Tom thinks. I am special. I am special. I am great. I am special. I am great. I am-_

Harry finds his mouth shaping the words, that particular mantra that Tom so favored. Soundless, feverish. God, _God_ \- 

_“Tom!” Mrs. Cole calls, and Tom drops onto the ratty cot, plucking forth a book from the bedspread and arranging himself in an assimilation of tidy industry._

_The door opens and a man with a long auburn beard, the absolute strangest clothes he has ever seen- is that a maroon velvet suit? Why on Earth - and twinkling, blue, eyes, strides in._

Twinkling. Blue. Eyes. 

_“Hello, Tom. My name is Albus Dumbledore._ ” 

The bell rings and students stream from the classroom. Harry is lost to a sea of dizzying humanity. 

* * *

Professor Babbling is a competent, if slightly scatterbrained, professor with peculiar violet eyes and mousy brown hair. She grades his work, mumbling under her breath absently about runes, and clears him for taking class with the sixth years.

Harry nods and smiles and sprints because he’ll be late for Potions. 

The Potions classroom is dark as ever, but slightly cleaner, the desks shinier and the walls practically wallpapered in posters of famous celebrities, who’d attended Slughorn’s ‘Slug Club’. Slughorn’s aesthetics, Harry can only imagine. (He wonders what Snape would think and scoffs to himself.) 

He’s late, as he predicted, and he sidles in as unobtrusively as he can be- or at least, he tries to. Hermione’s in the middle of answering a question, her eyes lit with fervor, but when Slughorn catches sight of him- well. Harry’s heart sinks. 

“Harry, m’boy!” Harry suppresses a sigh- the only people who call him ‘boy’ are Albus and Vernon and- well. He hates them both. 

Still, he doesn’t know this man quite yet, and any Potions professor is bound to be better than Snape. 

“Sir.” Harry nods. “McGonagall explained about your situation- we have several old Potions textbooks in the cabinet right over there, and I’m sure you’ll be able to find the necessary equipment!” 

Harry nods, throat dry (everyone is _looking_ at him) and makes for the cabinet, grabbing the first ratty textbook he can find and a pair of old scales. 

He doesn’t pay any attention to Slughorn’s droning- he hates Snape, but at least the man had _presence_ \- and instead, he flips open the book. The previous owner’d drawn all over it, and once Harry stops feeling irritated and starts actually reading the doodles, he realizes that they’re quite helpful, actually. He follows the instructions, mind fluttered somewhere far off, fingers moving in practiced mechanic, glancing down every so often to check the book- or, rather, the book’s vandaliser. 

“My, my, _my_!” 

Harry glances up to see Slughorn. The man’s peering at his cauldron, eyes wide and protuberant. “The clear winner! Excellent, excellent, Harry!” Slughorn beams, and he prattles on about Harry’s _mum_ and how he must have inherited her Potions skill, and Harry just nods. Fuck, why does everyone want to talk to him about his _parents_? 

Finally, the period’s over. Slughorn hands him a small vial, corked thickly with honey-scented wax and holding a peculiar gold tincture that looks like distilled happiness- apparently there’s some sort of contest, and he won it. Ron’s gaping at him, and while Hermione’s rather more dignified, there’s surprise and confusion in her eyes as well. Harry slips the book in his schoolbag, face hot, and sprints for the door. 

* * *

Potions. Without Severus, it doesn’t feel the same, and Draco feels a pang of nostalgia. The damp, piceous, fug of the cauldron fumes, the vicious gleam of silver and the sweet mordant smell of herbs- they all conspire to create something of an atmosphere, all lengthening shadows and the fixed glow of an adroit eye. 

Draco can feel a little part of him, the part balled tight and pressed into a diamond-hard kernel, melt away. 

Potter is bent over his book, his hair ridiculously amuck, and in the droughty light of the dungeons, he glows. 

Draco’s so distracted that he barely scrapes together a passing grade. He imagines Severus’s horrified face, and then, the expression Severus would make if he found out Draco was staring at _Potter_ , and hides his short laugh against his sleeve. 

Potter runs out of Potions as soon as the bell rings, and Draco, curious and more even-tempered than he has been in what feels like years (hating Potter took a lot of his energy, Draco realizes), follows. 

Potter’s loosely disheveled, cheeks flushed and panting. He runs- aimlessly, Draco thinks, seeking higher ground like a cliff swallow. They’re on the seventh floor, Potter makes an aborted movement that may have been the start of something, and then he slides, back scraping against the wall. 

He buries his face in his hands, eyes blank, and Draco feels like he’s intruding on something desperately private. Draco moves to leave, but the rasping husk of his shoes against the stones draws Potter’s eye to him like moth to flame. 

A brief glimpse of Potter’s face- stark, stricken, and then Potter’s drawing himself up and intoning “Malfoy” with cold, contemptuous, dignity. 

It’s such a stark contrast to their previous interactions- teetering a knife’s edge between teasing flirtatiousness and buried sincerity - that Draco gapes for all of one second before composing himself- exacting architecture, the cold, clean, lines of his face in unflappable repose. He is Narcissa Black Malfoy’s son, after all. 

And, and, and, arguing with Harry Potter is such a natural thing to do, so comforting he falls back on it in times of need. Cruel letter from Lucius? Hippogriff injury? Slytherin politics mis-maneuver? Antagonize Potter. 

Noteworthy: Draco isn’t used to seeing Harry Potter weak. Oh, Potter, face slicked in grime, blood, sweat, various indeterminable fluids - those great, terrible, eyes glowing with inextinguishable viridescence- that is familiar. 

Here, a boy who has sprung one-handed from death’s jaws, a basilisk’s poisons coursing through his veins negated, head held high- like it is nothing, like to wear death like a cloak is an ordinary occurence, like those eyes are human (they aren’t, they are a god’s eyes masquerading as a mortal’s, their placement on the shatteringly, terribly, human Harry Potter’s face is both a marvel and a horror). 

Draco remembers the dementors, remembers hearing of Potter’s fainting fit. They’d all felt it, even the Slytherins, that sense of dull horror- _he is the greatest among us, and he has fallen_. He’d mocked it if only to disguise the uncharacteristic discomfiture he’d felt, deep. 

Remembering those dulled eyes (call him naive but he’d seen those eyes as a sort of Promethean Fire, indomitable and forever lit), the cadaverous pale of his skin, the terribly visible tremble of his hands where they curled by his sides- it sends shivers through him still. 

Sitting in the stands at the Tournament, Potter blooming into shape on the cold earth, slamming down, weighed down by a body that should-could-would-have breathed still. That look in his eyes, like shattered bottle-green glass, hazy and indeterminate and searing. 

The Department of Mysteries, Lucius escaping Azkaban by a hair, and the rawness in Potter’s eyes. Cousin Sirius had died, Bella cackled to Narcissa, and wee Potter was _just so devastated_ , wasn’t it _funny_? He’d fallen into the Veil, and Potter had almost followed him so distraught he had been, wasn’t that so wonderful? 

And yet, Draco has never seen Harry Potter so vulnerable as he had been mere moments ago, his head bowed and cradled in the cage of his arms, the nape of his neck clean and bare and so killable. 

Such an acknowledgement of the world’s cruelty, such blind and brash trust in the imperviousness of the seventh-floor corridor, anyone could have come upon him, did he see, did he care? 

They’re sniping at each other; after nigh six years of this, they’ve become practiced, they know where it hurts and how to cut sharp and fast but not _too_ much ( _i don’t want you to bleed out too soon_ ), it’s a dance strung so, so, so intimate- sometimes, Draco fancies that it’s more intimate than Potter’s relationships with the Weasel and Granger, more honest. No tiptoeing, eggshells already ground to _dust_. Such utter desolation is a bare and utter truth, such careless- but oh, so, careful - violence brings forth such glittering phantasmagoria. 

Maybe it is all in his dreams, his magniloquent fancies of pretent, maybe he has imagined a romance for the two of them, dreamed up glittering balustrades and stones thrown at windows. Maybe this is _nothing_. (Maybe it is everything.) 

He’s just taken a swipe at the Chamber of Secrets debacle- Potter’s face is transformed, glazed with a facade of anger but Draco knows it’s just that, a falsity - and Potter starts laughing. 

“Alright- _you_ , of all people, should not get to make fun of that-” 

“ _Me_ of all people? What grand role did I play in your imagined tale of heroics?” 

Potter's mouth falls open, and it shouldn’t be so attractive- stupid, boorish, Gryffindor, Draco tells himself - but Circe, it is. 

“ _Imagined_? You- I - you - you think I was _lying_?” 

“You expect me to believe,” Draco says, flatly, “That you fought off Slytherin’s Basilisk with Gryffindor’s Sword in Merlin’s underpants and Morgana knighted you after the event?” 

“Ye- well, no, the parts about Morgana aren’t true- Merlin’s underpants, though, definitely, I gave them to Ron as a keepsake afterwards-” 

Draco swallows down a bubble of laughter and arches a delicate brow. 

“I’ll believe that when I see it, Potter.” 

Potter leans back on his forearms, and Draco can’t stop his gaze from flickering to the long lines of them. Elegant, muscled. Potter’s always been as slight as Draco is tall, almost elfin in stature, but he does, Draco notes, have very nice forearms. 

“Why not?” Potter says, smiling, (the curve of his lips, _plump red mouth- God_ ) and Draco has to blink several times before the words register. 

“You’d- take me. Into the Chamber of Secrets.” 

There’s a pause as they both take in that statement and then Potter’s laughing, a fist pressed to his mouth, chuckles bubbling up. “You can see _my_ Chamber of-” 

“God, stop,” Draco chokes out, pressing the flat of his palms against his eyes, because this is utterly mortifying. 

“What if I don’t want to?” Potter murmurs, and when Draco drops his hands, he’s leaning back again, green eyes bright and knifing. 

Draco swallows, and Potter’s eyes trace the bob of his throat. 

_Fuck._ Potter leans in and- 

Turns around, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll take you sometime this week.” Potter calls over his shoulder. 

_Motherfucking hell._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm actually sort of on the fence about Hermione and Ron. On the one hand, they can be pretty... gross, and this was supposed to be a story of Harry sort of casting off the blah Gryffindor boringness of the Chosen One, but on the other hand, this is a tale of Harry embracing his Slytherin side- that _isn't_ endlessly cliché like most fics are. And that includes irrational bashing. (I once read this fic that shamelessly and viciously slut-shamed Ginny Weasley and then brutally murdered her, and I was just like- _what_ the _fuck?_. First of all, slut-shaming is disgusting and cruel, and second of all, as fic writers, ideally our aim should be to write enjoyable work, and not.... I dunno, bigoted and gruesome manifestos? Just putting it out there! :)
> 
> And, when we get to the next chapter, we'll start to see some major canon divergence. This fic isn't about taking down Voldemort, btw. This is a drarry fic, and the ending is ambiguous (relatively) but you can assume that Harry will eventually take down Voldemort and his horcruxes? idk it'll work out. (or not hehe). Just! My point is that this is a story of their relationship and Harry and his Slytherin side. There is plot, and there is a vanquished evil, but it isn't... necessarily.... Voldemort. This is confusing, I know. Anyway, THERE WILL BE CANON DIVERGENCE. BEEP BEEP. CANON DIVERGENCE TRAIN, COMING THROUGH. MAKE WAY, MAKE WAY, FOR THE SEA OF CANON DIVERGENCE, LED BY THE MERRY SHIP "JOANNE'S A BITCH". (God, that didn't even make sense in my head)
> 
> Sorry for being all... late.... I still haven't completed all the chapters I'd like to, and my energy's kind of flagging.... and.... and work's eating me aLiVe there's just so much of it and i'm doing an online class in a second language which is so.... ugh..... *collapses in a pile of emotional bones*


	6. some kill their love when they are young

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shit happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to all my fellow americans: yaaaaayyyyyyyy!!!!! :)

They’re crossing staircases, down down down, and Harry feels a prickle on the leaf-line of his spine. Someone- he whirls around, sees a second-year girl, the same wan-faced one that’d carried the note from McGonagall’s office. Their gazes connect, and she stiffens, hands curling tightly by her sides. The paper crinkles in her fist.

Harry steps forward, eyes on the paper in the girl’s fist. She’s trembling slightly, and Harry feels bad but not that bad. 

“Do you have something for me?” Harry asks, and she nods, looking apologetic and thrusting the crumpled paper towards him. 

Harry dips his head to her in thanks. 

_Dear Harry,_  
_I would like to start our private lessons this Saturday. Kindly come along to my office at 8 P.M. I hope you are enjoying your first day back at school._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Albus Dumbledore_

_P.S. I enjoy Acid Pops._

Harry stares at it, in silence for a few moments. Acid Pops- the password, obviously. If he were different, Harry can imagine sneaking out to Hogsmeade to buy Acid Pops and giving one to the Headmaster just for the twinkle of his blue eyes and the _thank you, my dear boy_ such a gift would elicit. Harry’d meant to give him socks for Christmas back in first year, after the Mirror of Erised debacle but his disillusionment had come not too long after that. _Shame he’s such an ass, I have the best gift ideas_ Harry thinks ridiculously. 

“Tell him I have detention with Snape tonight, I can’t make it.” Harry tells her, at length, after rifling through all the possible excuses he could use. He just has to make sure Snape won’t bow to the will of his Headmaster and reschedule. 

The second-year girl nods. She’s not meeting his eyes, looking directly and resolutely at the stones; Harry feels a spurt of vague pity. “What’s your name?” Harry asks, biting his lip, and her gaze darts up, looking astonished. 

Her eyes are a knifing, piercing, blue, large and long-lashed and tinted with shades of violet, her hair is a fine red-gold curtain about the clean curve of her face, obscuring her pale features. She looks quite ill, her skin holds a sickly shine, but she holds his gaze with equanimity, spine straightening and eyes so steady it’s almost as if she’s taking his measure. Assessing. 

“Eilonwy,” She says, finally, like he’s passed inspection. “Eilonwy Selwyn.” 

Selwyn, a name plucked straight from the Sacred Twenty-Eight, a name that is as drawn to the Dark as a moth to light. Her father-brother-mother are most likely Marked. 

Harry smiles at her. “Well, pleased to meet you, Eilonwy Selwyn.” 

She blinks; a flash of red-gold eyelashes in a cutting sweep, and then she’s darting away, presumably to the Headmaster’s office. 

* * *

In Harry’s grand plan to evade his friends, he did not factor one thing into his calculations: Quidditch. He’s Captain now, and that means he has to hold tryouts and he knows that Ron will be trying out and Hermione will be in the stands. 

He scribbles out the information ( _tomorrow, Quidditch Pitch, after breakfast)_ and pins it on the notice board where clusters of eager Gryffindors soon converge, a frothing mass of excitement. He smiles vaguely and makes his way to Transfiguration, Eilonwy Selwyn’s burning eyes fixed in his mind. 

* * *

Harry has always followed his instincts. Aside from that one notable Quirrel/Snape mixup, he’s usually right. Something about being born for a war, born for a prophecy, groomed from the age of eleven and attacked constantly makes for very good instincts; Harry would’ve been dead by far if he didn’t listen to them. And there’s something about Eilonwy Selwyn that draws him, something strange in her large, unfathomable, eyes.

They’re practicing nonverbal Transfigurations at the moment, and Harry nods along vaguely to whatever she’s saying, his quill moving in empirical execution on the thick cream-colored reams of his parchment. 

He doesn’t think he’s absorbing anything at all, and he tries to wrench his mind away, but it feels like he’s on the verge of something, mind straining vaguely and insensibly for some concept that will fit everything neatly into place, just out of reach. 

There’s an underwater feel to it all, his head heavy and sound rippling in isacoustic reverberations. The light, too, a vatic gleam, strange and pelagic. 

_The light of the Slytherin common room, the mermaids and strange bioluminescent creatures, uncatalogued by human hands. Green hangings and expressions in blank repose, everyone is so careful, so wary._

_This suits Tom just fine; he has never let his guard down in the company of another. That is the only thing the orphanage has to recommend it- solitude, independence. No one there came to shepherd him into anything, he was left to his own devices- and what glorious devices they were, and yet, incomparable to the rich pressed luxury of Hogwarts, the practiced magic, the ease and finesse._

_Suddenly, his previous ministrations seem a blunt axe and Tom has never favored brute strength. He sharpens himself on the whetstone of their hatred. He raises his hand and earns points for his thoughtful, well-articulated, answers. He excels at spellwork and everything he puts his mind to. He puts his mind to many things._

_And someday, someday, Tom_ \- 

“Mr. Potter!” Harry jerks to life, hand tracing his scar automatically; there’s a burning heat behind it, almost painful but not quite. 

McGonagall is glaring at him. Students are snickering behind him and unwillingly, Harry flushes. She’s looking at him, expectant. 

“Could you repeat… that?” Harry asks, weakly. 

Lips thinning into a grim line, McGonagall gestures to the goblet in front of him. “I would like to see a mouse, Mr. Potter. Nonverbal.” 

Harry swallows and nods, drawing his wand from his waistband. He feels the leaping magic at his fingertips, rushing into his wand with eager avidity. Harry opens his mouth, closes it. Nonverbal. 

_Mutatione Vitae_ , Harry thinks, flicking his wand in the circular motion, and the goblet blooms, shifts, hatch-marks of fur and warm beating flesh emerging, as if the mouse has always been a goblet and the goblet has always been a mouse and he has simply melted the layer of encrusted metal to reveal the true shape of the goblet; a mouse, which has been there all along. 

He feels something of Tom in him, a lazy unbridled satisfaction. 

McGonagall looks surprised, pleasantly so. Harry supposes he’s never been this good in class. 

Harry smiles, painfully. 

* * *

  
Detention with Snape. He slips down to the kitchens to grab dinner; he doesn’t think even the eagle’s nest can hide him now, not when so many are looking for him.   


The house-elves are eager as ever, piping voices and Dobby’s large eyes; he thinks, again, of Eilonwy. There’s something _about_ her, but he doesn’t the time to think on it, because it’s 7:30 and he needs to eat, fast. They’re whipping up food, and Dobby hands him French onion soup and there’s practically mountains of treacle tart. 

Harry smiles with his lips and eats, in fits and starts. He isn’t hungry, he never is these days, but he knows he’ll be weak if he doesn’t eat and he doesn’t want to be weak in front of Severus Snape, who has always always loathed him. So many people loathe him, and Slytherins, most of them- Snape, Voldemort, once-maybe-Malfoy… Harry lets it slide off his back usually, but today, tender-feeling as he is, the thought of _so much_ hatred directed totally and utterly at him eats him, corrosive and acidulous. He- it _hurts_ him. 

But what can he do? Say _stop hating me_ and expect- expect what, Harry’s never been able to rely on anyone besides Ron and Hermione. 

“It is almost being time, Master Potter!” An elf squeaks, and Harry gets up, hurriedly sweeping crumbs off his lap and attempting to clean up after himself- the elves flood around him and rid the mess with a few brisk snaps. 

He feels useless, suddenly, as the elves bustle around, all green-gray thinness and lamplight eyes, like another Uncle Vernon, sitting raw-boned and stolidly lumpish in the center of whirling motion and people actually doing _work_ ; he wants to get up, move, _help_ , but he’ll never match the deft ease which characterizes the way the house elves do things, he’ll more likely make a mess of things and offend them than actually help. 

Harry wonders what it’s like to _want_ to work, to enjoy slavery. He can’t imagine it, can’t imagine the joy that comes from thankless toil. Maybe it’s like Quidditch, maybe it’s the bodily exertion and sweat, but he doesn’t think so, it’s something about being submissive, it’s- it’s like they’re _born_ for serving, it is their clear and utter purpose and they do not question. (Dobby did.) 

What is it like, Harry thinks, walking to the DADA classroom, to be so unwavering in your conviction, to hold something in such high esteem you are willing to kill, to sin, to burn, to die, for them? Like Muggles, Harry realizes with a sense of sinking revelation, like Muggles and their gods. They’d burned innocents in the name of their Gods, tortured and defiled and _died_ for them. 

Death Eaters would use the witch-burnings as examples, sheaves of paper detailing their wrongdoings. _Look, look what they have done to us, look at the fire licking flesh, look, you can see bone now do you see? Any one of them would burn you alive, it’s a terrible death, would you like it?_

Harry knows better. It’s humanity, that sick bright flame, that fever-shine of twisted light, that burning, fervid, passion behind the arc of a knife, the force of a fist, sharp hungry teeth. 

_Run away, now, little boy._

God, there’s something in the corridors. He can’t see it because he can’t see anything, it’s dark as oil and he can’t see his own hand in front of him, can’t catch any gleam of whiteness it’s only the unending, bromide, darkness, only the unbearable cloak of atrament, something sick and repulsive slinking towards him like the Basilisk but that’s dead, isn’t it, he- he killed it, didn’t he? What if- _God_ \- 

Harry bends his head, chin pressing into his sternum, hurrying hurrying hurrying, anything to get out of this dark corridor that looks like unraveling thread and paths that lead further into the dark, not the light. There’s something there’s something there’s something- 

Harry runs, panting, and then he’s at Snape’s door, hurling himself against it and knocking, frantically. “Help,” He gasps, mind gone senseless with terror, even Voldemort hasn’t inspired this much fear in him, there’s something dark in the corridors, something _sick_ \- 

The door is wrenched open and there’s Snape, irate and scowling, his hair loose around his pale, sallow, face. Harry feels such a gush of relief at the familiarity of it all that he sways with it. “ _What_?” Snape hisses, eyes alive and black as coal. 

“There’s,” Harry gasps out, “Something, something in the corridor, you have to-” 

“I don’t,” Snape says, silky and at ease now that he’s seen Harry’s in no immediate danger, “ _Have_ to do anything, boy.” 

_Boy._

Harry straightens immediately, spine stiffening on instinct; he can figure this out himself, no matter how much his head is aching (it feels like there’s something in his _skull_ , like a thousand Persian soldiers slamming white-knuckled fists against the exiguous cradle of of his skull, thin like sick things are, breakable as china), this is Severus Snape, this man loathes him, how could he forget? How could he- 

“Well, Potter? I am _waiting_.” 

Harry’s chin jerks up, he glares. “Nothing, _sir_ ,” Harry bites out. “I was just confused.” 

Snape looks at him, onyx eyes assessing and sharp, and Harry wonders if Snape’s capable of wordlessly and wandlessly Legilimizing him, Professor Dumbledore and Voldemort certainly are. Harry drops his gaze. 

Snape lets his hand fall from where it’s propped up on the doorframe and turns in a whirl of billowing robes. “You are to do lines,” Snape says, back to Harry and it would be oh-so-easy to curse him, _Sectumsempra_ maybe, he’d read it in the old Potions book and _for enemies_ is ambiguous, sure, but delightfully so. 

Harry imagines arterial spray, imagines bones breaking and Snape’s face, his impassive face, the gnarl of his brow and the sharp line of his mouth, twisting in pain. _Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you._ Harry says inwardly, and takes a seat. 

“ _Lines_ , Potter.” Snape snarls, and Harry bites back before he thinks. “Would you like me to carve it into my hand?” 

Snape frowns. “What?” 

In for a penny, in for a pound, Harry thinks, and lifts his left hand, _I must not tell lies_ standing out stark and white against his hand. He remembers the detention, remembers- 

_Pink walls, disgustingly twee, the whole of her office smells sweet as sugar. “I don’t think the message has quite sunken in yet,” She says, soft and gentle like she’s kitten fur and fairy floss, like she’s never harmed a hair on a child’s head._

_Harry bares his teeth._

_He’s stared into Lord Voldemort’s eyes without flinching._

_He can carve words into his hand._

_“I think I can do a few more,” Harry agrees, smiling with his teeth._

_“I’m so glad you understand,” she simpers, and watches him with flaring nostrils and greedy eyes, watches as he press the point of the quill so hard into the parchment that he thinks he might be reaching bone. Nothing hurts, everything hurts, nothing nothing nothing._

_He presses, down. Carves, carves, carves, reaches deep into a place he never knew he had in him and carves into that, too. You think you’re doing something to me, you’re doing nothing, Harry thinks vindictively; I could carve words into every inch of my body and you would still not own a centimeter-_

Snape looks at it, black eyes widening, and there’s something that almost resembles concern in his eyes, which is so utterly _wrong_ \- Snape should not be feeling concerned about Harry, the idea makes him 

He reaches into schoolbag, yanks a quill and parchment out of his bag in sharp, jerky, movements. “What should I be writing?” Harry asks, teeth gritted. 

Snape turns, exactly as the clock chimes 8 PM. He’s like a piece of clockwork, Harry thinks suddenly, like an ebony carved piece, well-oiled and perfectly laid for insertion. Does he ever eat does he even have _feelings_? 

“You will write the line ‘I will not disrupt class’ until the hour is over.” 

Harry grits his teeth- how the fuck is it his fault that McGonagall wanted to see him, but it’s _Snape_ , after all - and writes so hard it digs into the wood of the desk below him. 

After twenty minutes of this, the point of his quill snaps off. 

* * *

  
It’s Quidditch tryouts and Harry’s shivering, cold, the jumper under his robes threadbare and his gloves worn, the leather patchy and thin enough to prick a needle through.   


He hadn’t exactly remembered to buy new Quidditch gear, what with.. everything. 

Now, the rush of the crowd in the stands is overwhelming, the _sheer amount_ of hopefuls… Jesus Christ. 

Harry sweeps the stands, eyes ticking over the colors- there’s at least five Ravenclaws, and a dozen ‘Puffs. He feels a sudden wave of irritation, rising up behind his teeth- he can _feel it_ , surging, butting against his lips, wanting to break free - and he needs- this needs to be handled. He doesn’t have time for these glorified stalkers. 

“Right.” Harry mutters, gritting his teeth, and whips out his wand, layering a quick _Sonorus_ Charm over his throat. 

He clears his throat, and the sound of his voice through the Sonorus Charm, enhanced by the force of his irritation, cuts through the muttering, giggling, buzzing, masses as effectively as a knife though butter. 

“If you’re not in Gryffindor,” Harry says, sharply, “You might as well clear out.” He pauses, biting his lip. “And,” Harry adds reluctantly, “If you’re just here to gawk at me-” This prompts a round of furious giggles from a cluster of shiningly-arrayed Gryffindors, and Harry sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and raking a hand through his curls, which are immutably tangled from the wind. 

The motion- running a hand through windswept hair - brings to mind his father- his - James. Harry is nothing like him and he has never been so terribly, utterly, aware of this fact, like looking straight into the glaringly obvious prism of reflection. James, ineffable and affable, the popular beyond belief Gryffindor king, bully and heartbreaker in equal measure- no, Harry isn’t like that, despite looking like a near picture-perfect carbon copy of him, exterior-wise. 

No, by a combination of a loveless childhood and a early insertion into the stark, unforgiving, field of war, Harry is totally different from James- fundamentally, irredeemably. He thinks of Sirius, who’d perhaps expected another James or something close to him and who had landed himself with Harry- quieter, grimmer, used to the rigors of vitriol and the meaty swing of a fist, used to the serpentine cock of a pale head and the ruby angles of two eyes, unchangeable. _Harry Potter._ Harry knows the perpetual sibilance of Voldemort’s voice better than he knows the sound of his mother’s screams. 

(Sometimes, Harry thinks he hates his father. Pureblood, wealthy, loved, and such a fucking bully. At least Sirius had the excuse of the taint of hatred and Darkness from Grimmauld Place; James was cosseted and coddled every inch of his existence as Harry was not.) 

Still, look at him, look at him- carved and beaten bloody by crueler, more careless forces than his worst enemy’s. Look at him, an irascible victim of circumstance, so obvious, isn’t it? Harry hates James he hates Sirius he hates himself, maybe. He hates the incontrovertible parallels and the exacting comparisons and the sting of always, always, falling _short._ (His godfather’s last words to him weren’t meant for him at all.) 

Harry realizes he’s been silent for too long, just looking. The crowd, cowed by his unwavering gaze, has divided itself as requested, though, and he has before him a slightly more selective pool of candidates. 

His gaze catches on Ron. The sweet coppery shine of his orange hair, so bright in the shy shafts of morning light. The hardened set of his mouth. He would get on the team or die trying, Harry knows, because right now this isn’t just about Quidditch, it’s about them. Ron and Hermione don’t know what the matter was, don’t know why Harry can’t talk to them like normal- because he isn’t normal, he _isn’t_ \- and Ron’s stubborn, Hermione even more so. He sees her now, in the stands, her riotous hair full and thick and shining around her face, the creamy brown skin, and bright eyes, the elegant shift of her fingers, clenching around the handle of her wand. 

Harry looks away, tensing. 

He starts tryouts. 

God, they’re awful. He doesn’t even know what he should have expected, but the team he’d been on had been perfect, moving in unison like a well-oiled machine. Years of practice and drills, he can only imagine. He’d been a wee first year when he’d joined, after all, his perception limited to the narrow scope of hero-worship. 

He saves Keeper for last, trying to postpone the inevitable- Sisyphus pushing vainly at his boulder, he _knows_ \- and a blundering hulk of a sixth-year wanders up, sticking a broad hand forth and introducing himself as “McLaggen. Cormac McLaggen.” _Bond. James Bond._ Harry thinks vaguely, smiling in a cotton-y sort of way, lost amid his thoughts. 

Cormac saves the first two goals with what seems to be admirable ease, and Harry feels a sinking sort of feeling, _oh, Ron,_ and then he blunders the third spectacularly, so much so that the stands erupt with laughter. Not even Cormac… Harry looks to where Hermione’s sitting. Her nose and cheeks are pink, she’s averting her eyes, and he can see her wand, pointed precisely where Cormac was a few seconds ago. He feels the bizarre urge to laugh. For all that Hermione loves her morals and strict, equanimous, rules, she abandons them soundly in the face of mitigating circumstances. He casts his mind back to another Quidditch incident, the one in first year, Hermione setting Snape on fire. 

Hermione damn Granger. He feels a swell of longing, surging up so soundly and totally he can’t move for a few seconds, washing him in shades of nocturne and pitch-violet. 

Stupid. 

Ron saves all three of the goals. 

Harry announces him as Keeper. “Congratulations.” Harry says, quietly, when Ron approaches him, and then he’s snarling _Disillusio_ and escaping on the tide of excited bumbling and felicity. 

* * *

The thing. The fucking thing. Is. That Ron being made Keeper means Quidditch _practices_ \- which, now that Harry thinks about it, is most likely why he hadn’t minded Harry fleeing so quickly at tryouts.

Practice is godawful, with two of his favorite Weasleys on the team- Ron and Ginny - and Hermione in the stands and really, can this day get any worse? 

He combats this by putting them all through grueling drills, and soundly ignoring all of Ron’s overtures at conversation. He’s being an arse. He knows this. There is no question that this is true. There’s also no question that he’s going to keep doing this. 

In the end, Ron’s turned puce with frustration after letting almost all of the Quaffles slip past his fingers, Ginny’s barking at him and Ron and bloody everyone, and the Beaters are awkwardly hovering in the air, trading unsure looks. 

Harry blows his whistle, calling them to the ground. 

“Well.” Harry says, wishing he were anywhere else, “Rome wasn’t built in a day-” 

“ _What?_ ” One of the Beaters murmurs, audibly, and Harry pinches the bridge of his nose, again. God, he hates cross-communicating between Wizarding and Muggle references; he barely gets half of _either_ of them given that he was barely allowed to have any access to Muggle pop culture at the Dursley’s and he never gets the chance to further inculcate himself into Wizarding culture what with all the near death experiences and whatnot. Voldemort. The whole shebang. 

God, he’s such a mess. 

“What I mean to say,” Harry says, calmer, “Is that it’s going to be an uphill fight. You’re not satisfied. I’m not satisfied. And that’s fine. We’re going to take that dissatisfaction and we’re going to use it to propel us; we’re going to beat ourselves to the pulp and build ourselves up. And we’re going to win the Cup.” He adds as an afterthought. 

Harry smiles, every muscle in his body screaming of exhaustion. “We’re going to be,” He says, quiet and just a little bit vicious because the Dursley’s didn’t beat everything out of him, no, if anything, they _nourished_ that spite, let it bloom rampant, “The best fucking Quidditch team anyone has ever seen in Hogwarts. You hear me?” 

There’s a moment of silence, and then he hears tired hoots and hollers, smiles and promises. Back-claps. He sees Ron in the corner of his periphery, moving towards him, and Harry casts a few quick Cleaning Charms all over himself, ridding his skin of sweat and odor. He doesn’t have to shower here, he’ll just- he’ll just- 

Harry ducks his head, slings his bag over his shoulder, and disperses in the vivid blackness of five o’clock, Scotland. 

* * *

  
Of course, he hadn’t been keeping an eye on the second Weasley. Ginny corners him easily, her hair shining like a beacon.

“Ginny,” Harry says, because what else is there to say. There’s a senseless, inchoate, longing in him, whipping up and frothing like tides against the stark slippery surface of a cliff. He wants warmth and he wants- he wants the comforting peppery heat of the Burrow, wants the darkness and the meaty purple of Vernon Dursley to never have existed in the first place. God, if he’d grown up with the Weasley’s… 

“Harry.” Ginny clips out, fierce. She’s always been fierce, even hidden under the doe-eyed fangirl from second-year, or maybe Tom did that, Tom carved out the heart in her which was made of mollusk hearts and melting sugar and shoved his hands deep, shoved in iron and coal and fire. Tom does that to a lot of people, Harry thinks, senseless. Tom did that to him- 

What is he- what? He hadn’t, he doesn’t know what he’s- 

“ _Harry._ ” Ginny’s voice cuts through the rising crest of troubled, uneasy thoughts, quelling them and sweeping them back into the tangling riposte of the undertow. For a moment he hates her, he was just about to _realize_ something and she’d interrupted him. 

Then it’s gone and she’s just Ginny Weasley, the spitfire of a girl, his friend. 

“Yes?” Harry says, softly. 

She gapes at him. “You- _Harry_. What _happened_ over the summer?” 

Of all the questions to ask. Harry can’t stop the half-incredulous half-strangled laugh that bubbles out of his mouth; she flinches from the mad sound. 

“Things,” Harry says, weary. “Things happened and I-” Harry cuts himself off, biting his lip. “I’m dealing with it.” Harry finishes. 

Ginny eyes him, skeptical. “I’m sure you are.” 

Harry says nothing. She is, after all, quite correct. He feels small and flower-tender, standing in the cloak of night with a whitening hand clenched around his broomstick. He feels like he’s been pricked all around his skin with fine needles, he feels a soul-deep ache and, and, and. There’s an itchy heat behind his eyes, if he blinks the moment will pass, he’s sure of it. Amorphous, blown-away with a breath. 

“I’m sorry.” Harry says, at length. “Ginny, I’m sorry, but things- things have been so hard, and complicated, and I miss all of you, of course I do, but I won’t burden you with things you’ll most likely want me to _Obliviate_ you of afterwards.” His voice sounds far-away even to him, distant and removed. Is this Occlumency? He remembers thinking _does he even have feelings_ of Snape and now he thinks he has his answer. 

“Things? _Things_?” Ginny repeats, incredulous and righteous. “Harry _James_ Potter-” 

“Don’t.” Harry cuts her off quietly; his voice cracks in the middle. Harry _James_ Potter. He wishes, futilely, that his middle name was Will or Charles or something, anything, other than James. 

She subsides, staring up at him, her face pinched and so unlike her, splayed apart by shock, those familiar features arranging in unfamiliar context. She doesn’t recognize him anymore, Harry thinks, Ginny has seen the him that isn’t their Harry but his own, which is to say nothing much at all. 

He nods at her, cordial; bends his head against the fine drizzle that’s dispersing through the already cold night air, and heads for the castle. 

* * *

The days- pass. Somehow. He goes to classes, tries to deal with the encroaching tide of unfamiliar, alien, memories, avoids the dark and RonandHermione, and works tirelessly during Quidditch practice, until he’s- they’re all - nothing but a skin of flesh and sweat and slender bones knocking about, nothing but a hollow scooped out. (He wonders when he will learn to be anything but concave.) 

He works them to the bone; past that, to the marrow, until not even Ginny has the energy to approach him, until their minds are collectively empty and utterly displaced of anything but the implacable need for warm water and sleep and food. 

He sleeps in the Room of Requirement and gasps, flails really, awake at night, his dreams appellated ceaselessly, senselessly, by the spectre of a meaty purple face and sour breath and pain. Always, always, pain, always the sense of something inside him that does not belong, face pressed to the carpet and breathing hitched until he thinks he’ll wake up to the indent of Petunia’s spotless rugs on his cheek. 

He spends time with Luna, that ethereal dream-tied creature of air and the lonely blue of twilight, who witters about thestrals and places cool hands on his and smiles at him, heedless of recompense. 

He remembers his promise to Malfoy and the Chamber of Secrets and the temptation of having someone, _someone_ that’s not RonandHermione who believes him. He writes a note to Malfoy, writes a time and a date and the location (on the floor of the girl’s bathroom). Waits. (He doesn’t have to for too long; he gets a response the next day: 

_Eager, aren’t you? I’ll see you there._

__DM_ ) _

* * *

  
“Harry, m’boy!” Harry’s hurrying to meet Malfoy; he wants to be early, he feels something deep in his bones, something he doesn’t quite understand. Quickening in his blood, the feeling of deep-seated longing for something he cannot verbalize, lapping at the slick walls of his veins like schools of fish, until his hands are shaking from the intensity. He does not understand, but he knows this: _this_ , whatever it is, makes him _feel_.  


Now, this. Slughorn, round belly encased in emerald green, watery eyes and handsome jowls, chuckling and eyeing him with contrived camaraderie. 

“Yes, Professor?” Harry says- quiet, polite. He has to- he- 

“So polite, Harry! Yes, you remind me of-” Slughorn breaks off, brow furrowing slightly, lost to the tides of infirmity and the remembrance that comes, apparently, with age. He resumes quickly enough, picking up his stride. 

“Well, I’ve just come to invite you to the Slug Club- quite the gathering, you understand!” 

Harry’s first instinct is to turn him down, but then he remembers Dumbledore’s half-moon’s and loopy penmanship and he smiles, bright. 

“I’d be delighted to, Professor.” 

* * *

“You’re late.” Malfoy turns, his robes flicking around his feet; waves frothing at the feet of Botticelli’s Venus. An indescribable feeling washes over Harry, glazing his thoughts- he’s been here before, seen this before, done this before, and the sensation of it is heady, dreams strung on white lawn. 

He’s been staring, mouth parted. He needs to stop doing that, but Harry finds himself veering into his mind far too easily these days, falling prey to the drift of thoughts like poetry, and his skull is a cage of bone and misdirection and he cannot possibly break through. Harry’s mind is in shambling disarray, he notes, thoughts strewn like paper fireworks across the vast, eolian, abyss he has yet to plumb. Wind-strewn, mussed, quicksilver thoughts skating across the icy rime of perception, emotion a thick tinge illuminating and individuating the violence-wrung wreck of him, sea brine and blood. _I came to explore the wreck. I came to see the damage that was done._ Poetry- 

“Potter. _Potter._ ” 

Malfoy’s voice, snide and slightly concerned, drags Harry out of the muck. He blinks. His eyes are burning. 

“Right. Let’s go, then.” 

Harry shakes out the silvery cloth, light scatting showily across the stone bilge of the walls, flings it over the two of them- Malfoy’s warm breath in the moist enclosure of anonymity - and tugs Malfoy towards the bathroom. 

_the thing I came for:  
_the wreck and not the story of the wreck  
_the thing itself and not the myth  
_the drowned face always staring_  
_toward the sun_  
_the evidence of damage_  
_worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty_  
_the ribs of the disaster_  
_curving their assertion_  
__among the tentative haunters.__  
___

_This is the place._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't be able to post anything for.... a while, bc I'm doing NaNoWriMo and also I'm taking an online class in a second language and i have wOrK and ugHHHH.... Why am I doing NaNoWriMo, you ask? Well, I told myself if a certain someone won the election, I'd do NaNoWriMo to celebrate.... and while i'm ecstatic.... also..... WHY DID I MAKE THIS BET WITH MYSELF.


	7. ruined by a single sweetness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "i'll show you my Chamber of Secrets" &c

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm a shit but i'm not a _monster_ , merry christmas to y'all who celebrate it (i don't/kind of do. happy yule to my pagans out there!)

Potter’s tucked under his Invisibility Cloak with him, and the air of their closeness is warm and smells like pine and honey-scented broom polish and the expensive soap (it comes nestled in thick, pretty, parchment and works up to the thickest lathers Draco’s ever seen) that Narcissa buys. 

“So,” Draco says, trying not to let Potter’s proximity get to him, “Why exactly are we meeting in this… stimulating location?” 

Potter snorts, turning sideways to fix one luminous eye on him. Draco’s heart, encased in the stentorian curves of his ribs and several pounds of perpetually bruised flesh, most definitely does not stutter. 

“Because,” Potter whispers, breath gusting over the nape of Draco’s neck- Christ, this is not the time to be aroused - “Salazar Slytherin hid the _Chamber of Secrets_ ,” Potter lowers his voice, “In Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.” 

With Potter’s nearness and the silvery shimmer of the Cloak, obfuscating Draco’s gaze at every turn, the words take a few moments to register. 

When they do, Draco goes stiff, appalled. “ _What_ \- you’re having me on-” 

Potter’s voice is amused. “I assure you, I’m not. We’ll have to be quiet- Myrtle can get kind of loud.” 

_We’ll have to be quiet._ Merlin. Does Potter intentionally say the most arousing things he can come up with? 

They make their way into the bathroom, shoes skidding across the grimy slick of the tiles. Potter’s been here before, his footsteps tread with familiarity, breaths slowing and eyes on the tiles, almost like a pattern. 

Potter bends at the sinks, hands skating over each tap with absent-minded fondness of touch, eyes level with one tap. Draco squints in the near dark to see it- he thinks can see a snake-carving on the tap. Slowly, Potter hisses: _Open._

And. Lord. He’s spoken with snakes of all kinds, chatted with Saorise, hissed back and forth with a snarky adder, and all of it hasn’t prepared him for hearing Parseltongue fall from Potter’s lips with unspeakable eloquence, susurrating up Draco’s _spine_ , the slick sibilance of his voice, his tongue gleaming wetly. He wants- he wants to take that tongue into his mouth, sweet Circe, he wants that mouth that let such honeyed sounds fall forth, he-wants-it-wants-it. _Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. You are the mirror of the night. The violent flash of lightning._ His mind is bewildered, full of Muggle poetry. 

The tap below him widens, chasms into a gaping slick hole to slide in, a mouth to consume. Empty space, yawning. Wide. Blackness so thick one would have to wade in it, waist-high. 

Potter turns, the juncture of his neck and shoulder fluid and clean, something animalistic in the smooth cant of his movements. A flash of green irises, a slice of a challenge, and then he’s leaping through the slide like he’s done this in his sleep, like it’s a matter of routine. It probably is. Circe knows if Draco had access to the Chamber of Secrets, he would- 

He _does_ have access to the Chamber of Secrets, Draco realizes, eyes wide. All he has to do is find the snake-tap and hiss a simple _Open._

Giddiness bubbling in him, Draco kneels, perches on the brink, and lets _go_ , wind whistling past him. The air smells of wet stone and dark, mossy, things. He lets his hands drag on the grainy stone as he rushes by, relishes in the scrape against the pads of his fingers. 

There’s an abrupt breaking, the stone falling away from beneath him, and Draco only has time to murmur a swift Cushioning Charm before he’s landing, hard, on the slick, gleaming, tiles. 

Potter’s grinning, high flags of colour in his cheeks, green eyes bright. They’re- he’s slipped off his glasses, Draco realizes, and without them he looks impossibly beautiful, a bright burning pillar of glass and wild curls and violent colour. Something in Potter quickens at danger, something in him is only alive on the brink of death. Draco’s breath catches in his throat- he’s still on his knees; it’s strangely fitting - and he feels a deep, hollowing, ache inside him, that terribly human lust for beauty. 

Potter’s grin slips the longer Draco stays silent, and he makes his way, robes grazing the tiles as he bends slightly, a hand flung forth like an offering. Draco takes it, feeling impossibly tender all over, as if his skin’s been scraped raw. 

* * *

Malfoy has an odd expression on his face, something queer and fey, all the angles of his face drawing towards the center in heartbreaking desideratum. 

It’s over, gone, in a flash, Malfoy standing smoothly without the need for Harry’s hand, but there’s a lingering of something indiscernible and swift in the gray shadows of his irises. 

Harry swallows. Malfoy’s eyes are still on him, questioning, so Harry talks. 

“Back then, we’d brought Lockhart, to use as basilisk bait, or just as a trade-in for Ginny, I think. He was trying to run away, the cowardly git.” Harry says the last bit almost fondly- it’s been so long, he no longer holds any animosity for Lockhart. He has so many other things to hate, after all. 

“Awfully Slytherin of you.” Malfoy murmurs, eyes low on the ground. His voice is husky. 

“We were in Slytherin’s Chamber, it seemed appropriate.” Harry quips, and his eyes fall on the cave-in. He’d cleared away the rubble, but he couldn’t grow the walls back again. “Lockhart tried to attack us,” Harry continues, words cool, “Tried to wipe our memories and erase our minds, it was the only thing he knew how to do, really-” 

“ _Lockhart?_ A professor?” Malfoy interjects, looking appalled, and Harry nods. 

“But the thing is- d’you remember Ron’s wand that year, how it was broken? Well, Lockhart tried to wipe our memories, got as far as the first _Obliviate_ ,” Harry recounts, grinning now, “And then it backfired on him and his- all of his memories were wiped, he’s in the Janus Thickey Ward now.” 

He hears soft laughter and glances sideways; Malfoy is laughing, a hand pressed to his pink mouth. 

Harry opens his mouth to continue the story, and there’s a flash of memory, an image blooming in his mind: a young girl splayed out on the Chamber floor, red hair like blood pooling around her head. Alone, cold, and so, so thin. Ginny. He swallows. 

“There was a rockfall,” Harry says, voice subdued, “And Ron and Lockhart were trapped on one side. I-I knew I’d have to go on alone.” His eyes trace the crisp engravings, that beloved slickness. Slime, water washing over tile, the rasp of a basilisk’s scales. That familiar terror thudding, juddering in the pulse at his throat, the thin skin at his wrists, breaths sobbing harshly, singeing his throat with the force of them, the expiation. The weight of a sword’s pommel in his unformed hands. And afterwards, his hands hanging limply by his sides, heart hammering a ferris wheel in his chest until he couldn’t breathe for the terribly, lingering, pounding, for _what if it comes back what if it’s not dead what if I’m dead_ \- 

He’d thought it some miraculous feat, some marvelous legerdemain, and marked it as another curio of adrenaline, of the peculiarities of circumstance in which a heart afire with fear could find itself in. 

He doesn’t now. A chamber, a beast, a sword, a boy. (Two boys. _She won’t wake._ Tom. _Tom_.) It seems meant. 

Tom. The memories, foreign and tentative, not moving but _there_ , stagnant and enveloping in bluish amorphousness, they’re surging up as they do whenever he thinks of Tom- 

* * *

Potter’s gone silent, his face whitening, fists curling into loose flowers at his sides. There’s an almost indiscernible tremble running through him, and his eyes-

God, his eyes. They’ve always been that frightening shade of green, as long as Draco’s known him, but now they’ve taken on a bluish cast, like pictures he’s seen of newborns- a flat etiolated patina coating the sheen of his irises. 

He’s murmuring something, too, something that sounds like “marble” and “a riddle”. 

“Potter,” Draco murmurs, gripping his hands- trauma? some panic attack? - tightly. “ _Potter!_ ” He raises his voice, and the bluish sheen to Potter’s eyes recedes slightly, lingering at the corners of his cornea. He blinks slowly, the long feathery spikes of his lashes brushing his skin, like he’s coming out of a dream. 

“I- Malfoy,” Potter coughs, voice hoarse. “Er- sorry. That- happens sometimes.” 

“That. Happens. Sometimes?” Draco repeats, because that isn’t _normal_ , and while he understands that Potter’s life is the furthest from normal, surely… whatever _that_ was would be a cause for concern? 

“Yep.” Potter nods, smiling vaguely, and… moves on. Draco stares, mouth falling open uselessly, before he shelves the matter in his mind, resolving to interrogate Potter on it later. Right now, the Chamber is his priority. 

“Ginny was _right there_ ,” Potter says, eyes falling to the black stone. They’ve passed the entryway, and are heading into the actual Chamber. Slick black stone, massive pillars, the crackle of warding magic so ancient and immovable Draco wants to sneeze, an enormous bust of Slytherin prefacing what Draco assumes is a system of rooms. There’s bone, presumably from the basilisk, the curves of it stark and figuring against the blackness, a vestige of bromide skin lingering like a suggestion over the periosteum. The enormity of it, those god-like bones laid out in in some obscure language of death; hepatomancy. 

“Laid out on the stone, not moving… I thought she was dead.” Potter continues, thumb running over his index finger in subconscious stress again. It’s one of his nervous tells, Draco notes- these things are always good to know. 

Also, he doesn’t want to hear about Ginevra Weasley and how she made her way into Potter’s affections. The thought leaves him faintly ill. Nevertheless, Potter is his host, and never let it be said that Malfoys neglect their guest duties, so he listens attentively. 

“There was a boy there, already. Tom Riddle, his name was. I begged him to help me, and he said, all he said was _she won’t wake_. He’d been possessing her, you see, using her body to open the Chamber and petrify people. She’d tried to throw away his diary, but she stole it back again- she’d poured out her soul to him, and the manipulative disgusting bastard that he was, he’d pretended to be so _kind_. So _understanding_. She might’ve been in love with him, she might have just wanted a listening ear.” Potter’s breath catches as he inhales, he’s shaking subtly. Whatever comes up next, it’s of grave import. Draco leans forward. “He asked me what made me so _special_.” Potter spits, a hand raking through his mass of wild black curls. “So powerful. Enough to disassemble a Dark Lord.” _Disassemble_. Interesting word choice. 

“He asked me how I got rid of Voldemort. And when I asked him why he cared, why it mattered, when I told him that Voldemort was past his time, he said-” Potter swallows, voice tight, “ _Voldemort is my past, present, and future._ ” 

Potter raises his wand, the levering of his wand arm akin to the raising of a drawbridge. It’s abrupt, and Draco starts. 

Carelessly, Potter traces out the words TOM M A R V O L O R I D D L E. They burn, suspended in the chill of the Chamber. The air around them ripples, warps. They do not look like they are meant for the cool ache of the Chamber. 

Slowly, a white bicuspid tugging at his red mouth, Potter twists his wrist with a surprising amount of grace. Not elegance, never elegance, but a certain arresting, figuring, power that is born from duels and battles rather than dances and ballrooms. 

The letters move in tandem with the motions of his wrist, exchanging places like a game of Magical Chairs. Draco scans them- no. _No._ That can’t be… 

“Yes,” says Potter, like he’s guessed at Draco’s thoughts. “That does mean exactly what you think it does.” 

For the letters, spilling from the crisp edges of their designated parameters, spell out the damning I A M L O R D V O L D E M O R T. 

“What.” Draco chokes out after several long moments of staring, dumbfounded. 

“Oh, yeah, Tom Riddle. Awful nice bloke, wasn’t he? Lovely career choices.” 

Unbidden, Draco’s mind flits back to that day in the ballroom, a red-eyed monster and long, languid, white fingers. A skull and a rictus of a grin. Bared, yellowing, teeth. 

“Hmmm.” Draco says, faintly, which is, quite frankly, an accomplishment. 

“Well, Tommy sent his baby snake after me-” This, Draco translates to mean _Voldemort sent his enormous fifty foot basilisk to kill me_ in Potter-speak, “And, luckily, Fawkes flew down and dropped the Sorting Hat on the floor, and Gryffindor’s Sword came out of _that_ , and, well, it had me backed into a corner-” Here, Potter mimes holding the sword and makes appropriate stabby motions, “And I sort of shoved the sword in its mouth. Bye-bye, basilisk.” 

He looks inordinately cheerful at this. 

“You,” Draco has to clear his throat, “ _Actually_ killed Slytherin’s fucking Basilisk with Gryffindor’s fucking Sword while the Dark fucking Lord did his best to kill you.” 

Potter shrugs, elfin eyes dancing. “He wasn’t really doing anything- he was more like… cheerleading. In the background.” 

“The Dark Lord,” Draco says, voice wisping away, “Was-” He swallows again, “Cheerleading.” 

Potter chuckles, his laughter a warm and easy refrain in the undertow of Draco’s thoughts, which are, at the moment, comprised primarily of _what the actual buggering fuck_. 

“You’re an actual fucking disaster.” Draco concludes after several moments of introspection. Potter looks delighted by this. “A bloody danger magnet. How in Circe’s name do you manage to _find_ yourself in these situations?” 

“Trust me, I’ve been wondering about that everyday of my life,” Potter mutters, sliding his hands in his pockets- such a _Muggle_ gesture, but the way he does it, all loose shoulders and lean, relaxed, lines of muscle, makes it look artful. 

Draco’s right- Potter’s a walking disaster, an artist’s mess of contradictions. 

* * *

This is madness, but Harry’s never been one for rationality. The whole Chamber is heavily warded, Harry tells him, so any sort of magic, even Unforgivables, can be performed and the general Hogwarts wards won’t catch it. He sees the silver gleam in Malfoy’s eyes. 

“ _Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four,_ ” Harry hisses, watching as the mouth of the bust falls open. 

“Stuck-up bloke, wasn’t he?” Malfoy snorts, which Harry thinks is rich, and then- 

Wait. The implications of that innocuous statement- 

“You’re a Parselmouth?” Harry says, disbelieving, because he’s certain if Malfoy spoke Parseltongue he would have showed it off by now, or, or _something._. 

Malfoy opens his mouth, chagrined. Closes it. 

“What do you know about Parseltongue?” 

“It’s a magical language that involves the ability to speak to snakes and most relatives, including chimeras, several species of dragon, and cockatrices. It’s a dominant trait found primarily in the line of Salazar Slytherin, and several pureblooded lines in India. Salazar Slytherin is said to have performed a ritual to keep the Parseltongue trait alive in his descendants. Parselscript and Parselmagic are offshoots of Parseltongue- Parselscript is the phonetic translation of Parseltongue, and Parselmagic is magic spoken in Parseltongue, which amplifies the force of magic behind the spell by a constant of 2.5, although that can vary depending on the strength of the caster and the type of spell, given that Parselmagic works best with Transfiguration, Transmutation, and the Dark Arts.” Harry rattles off promptly. Malfoy gapes. 

“You- what in Merlin’s name? Has Granger finally used her demonic powers to possess you?” 

“I resent that implication.” Harry says, lofty, but he’s stifling a smile. It’s funny- when he’s with Malfoy or Luna, he feels more like _himself_ , more tethered and anchored, rooted without the burden of preconception. 

Malfoy swallows. “Right. Well, I did a ritual-” 

“Sounds suspiciously vague-” 

“ _I performed a completely reliable ritual_ and awakened the latent Parseltongue traits that lay in my bloodline, which has tenuous connections to the Gaunts and the Selwyn family, which in turn have tenuous connections to the now extinct Slytherin line.” 

This is interesting, but Harry realizes- the Chamber is no longer _safe._ Curiously enough, he doesn’t mind Malfoy using it, especially given that he’s apparently a Parselmouth via a ritual, but the Chamber was the one place he could be completely and totally alone, surrounded by achingly heavy wards and crackling magic. 

Harry closes his eyes. It’s not too big of a concession- the castle still has countless forgotten secrets, and dozens and dozens of secret alcoves and rooms, but still. 

“Why don’t we set parameters, if we’re to share the Chamber?” Harry says, finally. 

“Parameters?” 

Harry nods, biting his lip. “It depends on what you’ll be using it for- I’ve been using it almost exclusively for the library and the ritual room, not to mention the wards. I don’t mind you using the library- what I mean to say is that I prefer my privacy, and some of the things I do in here are extremely sensitive to disturbances. If you’re not going to be using the ritual room too often, I would ask you to ask me in advance before you enter it.” 

Malfoy nods, thoughtful. “The _library_ \- Circe, I can’t imagine how many restricted books must be there-” 

“There’s a 1857 edition of Magick Moste Evil.” Harry informs him, remembering his own feverish excitement when he’d finally uncovered the library, and all the astonishingly rare books within it. 

Malfoy whirls, eyes wide. “The 1857 Edition? Not even the library at the Manor has- wait.” 

Malfoy pauses, eyes flitting over Harry, stroking over the wild tufts of hair and the Gryffindor tie knotted securely at the base of his throat. His eyes are a weight, heavy in the draughty, whispering, echoes of the Chamber, grout stained bromide and flaking with age. He’s staring at Harry so completely, so utterly, absorbing the hollows and hallows of him, taking his measure. No one’s looked at him with such intent before, no one’s- 

Tom’s memories surge up at that, a rivaling glee in them. _Let’s see about that, shall we?_ Harry pushes them down; he doesn’t need them now. 

* * *

_There’s an 1857 edition of Magick Moste Evil._ Words that would be believable if spoken in the Manor, or by Blaise of Pansy or Daphne or Theo, but out of _Harry fucking Potter’s_ mouth?

“You’ve- _you_ , Harry Potter, have read _Magick Moste Evil_.” 

There’s a dizzy feeling in his head, like champagne bubbles, a rosy popping tide of misconception, overturned. What. _What-_ Potter. Dark Magic. The Chamber- it paints a picture, a vivid one, _avada kedavra_ viridescence and Potter’s voice, the taunt of it, _There’s a 1857 edition of Magick Moste Evil_ , the way he delights in Draco’s shock like a puppeteer assigning his puppet the most delirious of articulations, that gleam in his eye, the smoky smell of Dark Magic rising off his skin like petals of rippling heat. 

“Okay.” Draco says, faintly. “Right.” The Dark Lord was once called ‘Tom’, Potter slayed a basilisk with Gryffindor’s Sword while Voldemort played cheerleader in the background, and Potter is apparently familiar with the Dark Arts. He’s already had a few shocks to the system; what’s one more? 

“Alright, there?” Potter taunts, thick black lashes flicking teasingly. He strides ahead of Draco, moving fluidly towards Salazar Slytherin’s mouth, and the sway of his hips- deliberate, those black eyelashes a preface to what Draco _knows_ is coming - Draco knows how this will end. He- 

Follows. 

* * *

Harry Potter leads Draco Malfoy into Salazar Slytherin’s mouth, a hand braced on the crumbling teeth, and for a moment the earth is broken apart by a single stillness. Singular. Extraneous.

Then, there is a soft sound, a curse, and a huff of opposing laughter. 

_Goddammit_ \- the air cut with darkness - 

_Why so_ \- 

_Shut up._

_Alright, Malfoy._ A smile tucked in the darkness; teeth obscured by the fold of a cloak, the angle of a chin. 

_Draco. Call me Draco_. 

_Alright, Draco_ \- breath blooming, flourishing into something as vast and inexplicable as the turn of a blade, the wheel, the year. Sunlight, bottled. 

The skid of a boot on stone, the press of skin on skin- 

_Careful. Watch your step._

* * *

Watch (carefully). This is how-

* * *

Draco can’t breathe, the air is strung so tightly, thick with anticipation- is he the only feeling this? He can’t _breathe_ \- and something smoky, lazy, hypnagogic.

 _I want_ \- he bites his lip. How to- 

* * *

It starts like this: on accident. Harry’s got his eyes on the serpentine sconces, all lazy scales and sinuous thickening, and his next offhand comment comes out in Parseltongue.

Draco inhales, want shuddering through him like blood in systole. He responds in a slick, smooth, hiss, and Harry- 

Harry inhales, sharply, pulse juddering through his throat, mind going blank with desire. 

(He presses Draco against the damp, brackish, stones and nips at his jaw, hands tangling in his spindrifts of white-blonde hair.) 

* * *

Potter’s got him against the wall, and all Draco can think is _finally. Circe, finally._. It feels like he’s been waiting thousands of years for Potter’s mouth, pressing nipping kisses on the line of his jaw but- not- on his _mouth -  
_

Draco makes a frustrated noise, slides his hands around to grip the nape of Potter’s neck, and seeks out Potter’s mouth with his own, fitting their lips together and swallowing Potter’s surprised gasp. 

“ _Draco_ ,” Potter hisses, and the Parseltongue is like fire in their kindling; Draco gasps and loops his legs around Potter’s waist, smiling against his mouth. 

Potter’s fingers, settling clever along the divots of Draco’s hipbones. His tongue, licking into Draco’s mouth, a thigh sliding in between Draco’s legs and pressing _just there_. (Draco arches into him, unsteady.) 

He’s been looking at Potter for _years_ , misbegotten want burning in him like Promethean Fire, and now Potter’s murmuring _Draco, Draco_ against his mouth and has a thigh between his legs and it’s- a lot. 

* * *

Draco slides those long, pale, fingers under Harry’s shirt, freeing it from his pants and then his fingertips are sliding along the iliac grooves abridging Harry’s pelvis and it’s so much, it’s _so much_ and Harry wants it, he _does_ , but there’s a voice like Vernon in his head, and the memories of a puce face and disgusting wetness and sickening, terrible, pain, and Draco’s stroking down his navel and he- can’t.

Harry tears away from Malfoy, gasping- shaking. Shuddering with want and sickness in equal measure- he is _sickened_ by the terrible force of his want- is this what Vernon felt? Because he might understand, might possibly- if Malfoy were spread out under him- could he? Would he? And Harry’s running. 

* * *

One moment Potter’s pressing deeper, smiling, and the next he’s tearing himself away, face utterly white, lips slick and berry-red. Draco can see the darkness of his mouth, that well-circle of the unknown, known. _My tongue was inside that mouth_ , Draco thinks abstractly- one second, only, because Potter’s eyes are horrified and so very green and he’s sprinting away, and Draco’s alone and so very very cold.

“I,” he says, weakly, the sound of Potter’s running echoing in his mind, his bruised spine pressing into the wall and he hadn’t even noticed the pain but he does, now. He does, now. He wraps his arms around his knees, presses his face into the damp, thick, fabric, of his robes, and breathes in, unsteadily. His jawline is still dotted with Potter’s bruising kisses, his mouth’s still swollen. 

There’s pain hitching in his throat and he wants to cry but he can’t. He’s shaking, a bone-deep sort of shaking that runs through every rivulet of blood in his veins, and he bites down on his lip, hard, ignoring the part of him that whispers _Potter’s teeth were just there, weren’t they? Desperate, aren’t you_? Except he _is_ , because how fucking stupid did he have to be- it was the Parseltongue, he knows, Circe, if he hadn’t had such ironclad control of himself he might have pressed Potter against the nearest surface when hearing him speak it, too. But then the desire had faded and Potter had realized who, exactly, he was kissing, and the want in him had distilled into horror, plain and simple. 

(When he closes his eyes, there’s memory of Potter, white-faced, mouth open in mortified pantomime, like that Muggle painting _The Scream. That horror is for you,_ Draco tells himself, and he doesn’t even blame Potter- he’s disgusting, a monster has touched this skin, bruised him, Marked him.). Still, how had he been so foolish, how could he? He’s a fucking Death Eater, and he’s just kissed (admittedly, it’s not likely he’ll tell, like that’s any sort of condolence) Harry fucking Potter. He- Circe and - and - Merlin. Merlin. 

“Fuck,” Draco says, voice wavering. “ _Fuck._ ” 

* * *

The Chamber is dark, the weight of damp air pressing into Harry, palpable, goosing his arms up and down, and he wants desperately to curl into a lost corner somewhere but Draco’s still here and he doesn’t want to have to- explain.

He doesn’t want to have to do anything, he needs to go, run, drift away on a high curl of buffeting wind and become something _else_ , eolian and purified, not this shaking, useless, thing a single kiss can turn him into. 

Harry twitches a hand, a wave of panicked magic displacing the cold, still, air and carrying him up the slick walls, through the channel and propelling him to the gloss-grimed tiles bordering the Chamber’s womb. It feels like a rebirth, the action of it. 

He plasters several Notice-Me-Not Charms over the entrance- he owes Malfoy that much, owes Malfoy more, if he’s honest - and flings the Cloak over himself, running soundlessly on cold stone. The stones are hard, clipping the soles of his feet and sending shivering aftershocks up the long bones of his shins, frissoning into his kneecaps. Discomfort, deserved. 

He moves blindly through the castle that’s been the closest possible thing a lost orphan can call home for years, and Hogwarts herself moves with him, corridors volte-facing and bending the currents of reality for him, stone melting and ossifying in dizzying peristalsis, the thrum of Her magic thudding as he swallows, pulse fluttering like a crushed bird’s wings under the thin skin of his throat. Cloaking darkness, a mothering alcove that Hogwarts pushes him gently towards- it’s what he needs; cramped darkness has always been inexplicably comforting for him. 

“Stop,” Harry murmurs over and over and over, pressing his knuckles into his mouth and relishing in the bite of teeth on skin, the shocking sting, teeth cutting past skin 

“Just-” He chokes out, the jagged edges of his own voice a soothing refrain in the humming quiet of Hogwarts asleep (but not quite; no, not ever). “God-” finally, shaking, falling apart, meat falling gently off bone- _tender_ \- rendering, clarification. He feels- solidified, startling present, the ache in his knees from kneeling, the air bent around him in tattered warmth. 

“ _Tempus_ ,” Harry says at last, and the curling light tells him it’s been half an hour since he’d run from the Chamber. 

Slowly, he stands, wincing at the pain in his knees. He feels hungry, empty, hollowed and scooped out with a silver spoon (Malfoy, his mind supplies; _Draco_ his body whispers). He doesn’t bother with the Cloak- there’s a reckless kind of insolubility to him, _catch me if you can if you can_. He thinks of Professor McGonagall and the elegant bow of her feline form, and understands a fraction more of the universe. Secrets, transcribed, inking and unearthing themselves in rich pallets of crackling magic. Ancient, he feels; careless. 

What could I be? Harry thinks as he trips artlessly on the rounded stones of Hogwarts. Is this how Luna feels, traipsing merrily along with her loose, shining hair swaying in rivulets of white-gold ( _DracoDracoDraco_ )? 

He could be- he could. He’s still making something of himself, Harry remembers, still trying to build something that resembles a human out of the scattered, tattered, desolation of his self, like transmutation, like alchemy and bloodied stones and black cauldrons. That person, that- he could be like Luna, if he wanted, and it wouldn’t, necessarily, have to be like trying on a mask- or it would be, but like trying on enchanted clothing and having it assimilate to your body, absorbing the essence of you through the keyholes of your pores, your ears, the cavern of your mouth. He could be like anyone he wanted, he could believe in Nargles and wear radishes, he could give zero fucks about Britain and swan off to Zimbabwe, he could, he could, he could- 

“Ron! I- oh! _Harry!_ ” 

Harry’s head jerks up. _Hermione._ He starts- and stares, because this scenario is so far removed from what he’d been thinking of, it was almost like something of a fantasy, a dream transcribed onto the glittering Hogwarts dark- syrupy, temperate. 

“Er. Shit.” Harry says, uselessly. What. What can he possibly say? All at once, the moonshine Luna-gleam of the night, arrayed prettily ‘round the fat stones of the castle, falls away in glittering, twisted, shards; it is just him and his two best friends, who he hasn’t spoken to in a month, staring at each other in the wild, chillingly beautiful, Scottish night. Six feet away, and it feels like an insurmountable chasm already. _See how the light needs shadows._

“Oh, _Harry_ ,” Hermione says, helplessly, and her eyes are so large and brown and glittering, her face drawn in gentle, forgiving, lines from the tip of her rounded nose to the point of her chin; everything about her is so unsullied. 

_See how the light needs shadows._. That line is from a stray thought that does not belong to him, a thread of a tapestry that once hung on someone ( _Tom! Tom, help_ )’s wall. 

“I’m just. Going to-” Even as he coughs the words out, he knows it’s no use. Hermione’s wand is quick as a viper and Ron knows the passageways just as well as he does; he’s not getting away from them anytime soon. 

“Oh, _no_ you don’t, you fucking arse,” Hermione says, fierce, and he’s so shocked by her language he actually starts choking. “ _Anapneo!_ ” A decisive flick of her wand, and Harry’s throat is clear again. 

“We are going to _talk_ about this.” Hermione says lowly, and maybe because Harry’s exhausted and so _sick_ of hurting people, maybe because he’d never, not even superficially, expected his avoidance to last this long anyway, and it was a miracle that it had but one that was coming to its blessed end now. 

“Lead the way.” Harry mutters, snarky, and Hermione whips a textbook perfect Stinging Hex his way, grabbing his elbow and hustling him towards- ah. In his Luna-induced fit of optimism, he’d made his way to the seventh floor, and she’s hustling them to the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, towards _his room_ \- 

“Hermione,” Harry tries, but she’s already pacing left-right-left furiously, and the familiar round-dobbed doorknob is blooming gold. _Fuck._

Hermione seizes the doorknob, twists it with shocking savagery, and wrenches the door open, marching with short, sharp, snapping, steps- and slowing, pausing, forehead creasing in confusion. 

“That’s- isn’t that your snake? Oh- _Harry_ , is this where you’ve been sleeping?” 

Harry swallows, humiliation tightening in the back of his throat. “I. Maybe.” 

She turns to face him, hands tangling in the deep pockets of her robes, and Harry has to close his eyes for a moment, so absolute is his discomfort. 

“Well?” He says after a suitably long pause. “Aren’t we going to- _talk_?” 

With that, Hermione gives a vicious glare, grabs both his and Ron’s elbows, and hauls them inside, seating them defiantly on the large velvety beanbags that’ve helpfully materialized in the center of the Indian woven rug. 

“Alright,” Hermione mutters to herself. “Alright. Harry, what _happened_ over the summer?” 

Harry opens his mouth. Closes it, looking at her helplessly. Where, _where_ , should he fucking _start_ , then? 

Harry leans, sags, really against the beanbag, an overwhelming urge to go to sleep surging over him. The fragile, fissiparous, fragments of his self-made reality are crumbling to shreds around him and he cannot do a thing. He cannot do a _thing_. 

“Not much,” Harry says, dully. “Same as my other summers, really-” Horribly, his voice breaks, the rising tide of a sob swelling in his throat. Shit. 

“Harry.” Hermione says. 

And then she’s lunging over the gaps of the beanbags- he backs away, shrinking against the cushion - and gripping him in her arms, and it’s as if touch is the catalyst to bring his wavering, pitiful, house of cards that could only ever be a house and not a _home_ , crashing down utterly around them, and there’s wetness painting his cheeks like seawater. He is shaking and trying to get out get _out_ , the tight grasp of her arms, nubbly Weasley sweater dragging against his robes, the itchy cough of wool conjuring images of Petunia’s rug and a face purple with mad, lustful, self-importance and- and he- 

He shoves her away, fingers scraping raw against her jumper, the fug of panic globing his thoughts into concentricity, into spheres that write their own source codes, into self-perpetuating chambers of dim, echoing, portent. He cannot think properly; when he tilts his head back he smells smoke and burning, burning. 

“Go,” He chokes out, and how mad must he look, fingers scrabbling uselessly at his sides, eyes green and glazed with what, terror? He can’t decide what is more important, he can’t help but want privacy, want succor, want arms around him and yet all at once, loss. 

“ _Go!_ ” Shrieking now, desperate, the end of sound drifting up into a tight wail. They do not leave, they scramble on their beanbags and look at him with enormous eyes asking, asking, asking, and he begs the Room, begs it _go_ begs it _stay_ begs it _help_. 

And then there is nothing but the overwhelming urge for them to _leave_ and they do, magic urging slack, uncooperative, limbs into seaweed motion, tendrils and front and idle pale forearms. This is the unrest, he thinks; this is not- correct. Accurate. What could he have done? They would not leave, but they are now gone, where does the line cross, where do we draw it, on the sand? His thoughts undulate, they come in tides and moon-crests, he’s a sunken pool of forgetting on the colorfully matted floor. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can we all just breathe a sigh of relief that democracy exists
> 
> yesterday I made a dress and the day before that i made a gathered skirt with blueberry fabric- by which i mean the fabric had blueberries on it like polka dots, 'tis very fetching - and today i made an apron and i feel like i could be a good housewife. homemaker? domestic goddess? because also i made crème brûlée the other day (which isn't that much of an accomplishment. it's very misleadingly easy. if anyone's interested, i used the website "Sally's Baking Addiction" which i highly recommend for all baking pursuits, especially cake and orange curd) and i feel so hip. i have not yet made sourdough but it's a situation that is liable to change, so i'll keep you guys updated. 
> 
> in case you couldn't tell you guys are my only friends also i made a tumblr and some person followed me and i feel famous. please talk to me in the comments, even if it's to chat about your cats and their various methods of evil because i want to know. let's be friends. 
> 
> seriously. consider me your agony aunt. you can even type it out in a sort of "dear pansexual_intellectual..... sincerely, flustered" format and i shall do my best to use my copious history of excellent and wise decision-making to assist you. 
> 
> please don't skip over this note like it never existed :( it will make me sad :((((( that means COMMENT PLEASE :))))) 
> 
> also i've been reading stuff lately and i thought to leave you with some quotes to repurpose and sound smart/edgy/like an educated, cultured, European, intellectual with sweater vests and Oxfords: 
> 
> _“There are only a few people I like, and fewer still who I think are good people. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it.”_ **Pride and Prejudice**


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